Coffitivity: Increasing Creativity One Listener at a Time

Last week, we sat down with Justin Kauszler and ACe Callwood, founders of the web app that produces ambient coffee shop noise—Coffitivity. The app, developed through our business incubator 80amps, was recently covered in Lifehacker, The Next Web and Mashable. Basically, it's helping fight creative block one listener at a time. Here are five things you should know about the app and the guys (and gal) behind it:

1) It's free. Coffee is expensive. Coffitivity is free. Enough said on this point.

2) It’s backed by research. A few weeks ago, ACe read a whitepaper exploring the effects of ambient noise on creative cognition. Coincidently, around the same time, Justin was sitting in his silent office, uninspired. They put two and two together, pulled in Nicole and the rest is history.

3) They're coming to a coffee shop near you. They have recorded at Harrison Street Café, Urban Farmhouse and a café on VCU’s campus. As for those located across the U.S and even around the world, Coffitivity is encouraging users to submit recordings from their favorite coffee shops. So far, they have received tracks from Norway, Korea and Germany.

4) Japan loves them. When the site first launched, the response was overwhelming. They received more than 49,000 hits the first day, 70% of which were from Japan. Though that percentage is down to about 30% now, the Coffitivity Twitter page still receives frequent foreign tweets.

5) It's totally nebulous. ACe and Justin aren't afraid to admit that Coffitivity is a work in progress. They are constantly recording, editing and revising the coffee shop footage. What’s to come? No promises, but the future could include a mobile app that allows you to listen to Coffitivity and iTunes at the same time, brower extensions and an app compatible for Androids. But we’ll just have to wait and see.

Coffitivity was concepted, created and developed by three VCU Graduates: Justin Kauszler, ACe Callwood and Nicole Horton, with help from the Martin Agency-backed business incubator 80amps.