TartanLink

Inspiration

As students at Carnegie Mellon University Africa, our team directly experienced the stressful, fragmented process of finding co-living arrangements in Kigali. The two-week window for securing housing often forced us into incompatible roommate situations and exposed us to unverified landlords and exploitative agent fees. We were inspired to solve our own problem by creating a solution built on the principle of community trust - a platform built by Tartans, for Tartans.

What it does and how we built it

TartanLink is an exclusive, end-to-end co-living platform for the CMU-Africa community. We developed it as a web and mobile application using a modern stack - Flutter for the frontend, with Firebase for authentication, Postgres SQL for database, Amazon S3 for storage and FastAPI powering our backend services. The platform's journey is seamless: Students log in securely using their CMU credentials. They take a brief, insightful compatibility quiz. Our algorithm generates matches with other Tartans based on shared living habits and preferences. Once a group is formed, they unlock access to a curated marketplace of properties listed by verified landlords. This creates a secure, closed-loop ecosystem where trust is built-in, not an afterthought.

Challenges we ran into

we map out TartanLink, our challenges are strategic and research-based. Our primary hurdle is solving the classic "chicken-and-egg" problem of a two-sided marketplace: we must design a go-to-market strategy that attracts a critical mass of verified landlords while simultaneously registering student users. Secondly, designing a compatibility algorithm that is genuinely predictive - not just superficial - requires deep user research to identify the true drivers of roommate harmony and conflict. Finally, as a focused team of three, our main design challenge is aggressive prioritization: defining a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that delivers immediate, non-negotiable value to both students and landlords from day one.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud to have built a working prototype that connects students end-to-end from roommate matching to move-in. We solve the entire problem from "Who will I live with?" to "Here are the keys to our new home." We also succeeded in building trust into the system through verified housing and exclusive CMU access. Seeing real Tartans use the app and find genuine connections will be the biggest win.

What we learned

Through this process, we learned that for a two-sided marketplace, user trust is as critical as functionality. We deepened our expertise in authentication systems, user experience design, and the unique dynamics of building a community-driven platform. Ultimately, the project affirmed that the most powerful solutions arise from directly addressing shared, real-world pain points.

What's next for TartanLink

Our immediate roadmap is to secure an official partnership with CMU-Africa for student onboarding while simultaneously building our marketplace of verified landlords through a success-based commission model. We will then evolve the platform with AI-driven matching and expand our revenue streams through premium features and integrated "Move-In Service Partnerships" with local vendors. The ultimate vision is to perfect this trusted co-living blueprint in Kigali before scaling it to solve the same critical housing problem for students at other universities across Africa.