Nikil Viswanathan

Nikil Viswanathan is an American entrepreneur and public figure. He is the cofounder of Down To Lunch, the social hangout iPhone app which hit #1 in the App Store social rankings. He also created Check In To My Flight, a website which let travelers automatically check in to their Southwest Airlines flight. In January 2017, he was honored by Forbes with their 30 Under 30 award.

Early Life

Viswanathan grew up in Lubbock, Texas and attended Lubbock High School where he was valedictorian and had the highest GPA in the history of the school. He was part of the Boy Scouts of America and was awarded the Eagle Scout honor.

Down To Lunch

Viswanathan and his roommate and cofounder Joseph Lau moved to San Francisco and said that they missed their friends because they were working all the time. After finding it difficult to discover which of their friends was available when they wanted to hangout, they conceived the idea of being able to press a button to send a hangout request to all of their friends. On a Sunday afternoon in a "One Direction" Fueled coding session, they created the app. Within 48 hours, people around the world were using the app, even though it was only available as a link from Viswanathan's Facebook. Down To Lunch rapidly started being used by students at colleges around the country, sometimes growing to be used by more than 15% of a college campus within 24 hours without any marketing. Down to Lunch rose to be the #1 app in the App Store social category and #2 overall. The app was featured on the front page of the New York Times business section on April 20, 2016.

Check In To My Flight

While visiting his sister at Wharton, Viswanathan had an hour before he went out to a party so he built a website that would automatically check him into his Southwest Airlines flight. He posted it on his Facebook, and said over 10,000 people were on the site in just a couple weeks. He was forced to shut it down after Southwest Airlines sent him a Cease and Desist letter.