Alejandro Diez launched a mobile app across Boston colleges, where students can safely connect, buy, sell or rent from one another.
When Alejandro Díez was a computer science student at Northeastern University, he got burned a few times trying to sell or buy items through such online platforms as Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and Craigslist.
“I got scammed a few times,” says Díez, who graduated from Northeastern in 2023. “[These] platforms don’t really do anything to protect you.”
That experience sparked an idea. Díez decided to create his own application to provide college students with a place where they could safely buy, sell, rent and swap from one another without the fear of being swindled.
In May, Díez launched iWantIt, a mobile app designed to do exactly that. Since then, it has gained traction across nearly all college and university campuses in the Boston area.
“The response has been amazing,” he says. “My main priority is to keep students safe.”
That is why he implemented multiple security features to reduce the risk of scams and bad actors.
“There’s a lot of good people out there, but there’s also a lot of bad people,” says Díez, who grew up in Andorra, a small European country nestled in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain. “Andorra is so tiny; you know a lot of people, but here it was a huge reality check.”
iWantIt serves as both a marketplace and a community forum for college students.
To sign up, users must verify enrollment with a “.edu” email address.
Every transaction starts with a message. Buyers must contact sellers before making an offer — a feature central to building trust.
“I wanted to create that first level of trust,” Díez says. “A conversation first — maybe, ‘What school do you go to?’ — helps you feel safe.”
Once a price is agreed upon, the item is reserved for the buyer for 24 hours. Payments are handled via Stripe, a secure third-party platform. When the buyer makes a payment, the money is held in escrow.
The seller can ship the item using a UPS or USPS label created in the app or offer delivery or pickup options.
The buyer has 48 hours after receiving the item to confirm its condition before the seller is paid. If the item isn’t as described or was never dropped off, the buyer is refunded.
The app actively monitors activity to ensure safety. Users who violate rules can be blocked or reported to their school.
“We can take the appropriate steps to manage the situation,” Díez says.
Posts and users can be flagged for scams or inappropriate behavior. Díez emphasizes fair dispute resolution and user protection.
Building iWantIt took Díez over a year and a half. He taught himself mobile development along the way.
“Doing a project is the best way to learn,” Díez says. “That’s why co-op is so valuable. You really learn your lessons there.”
He credits his father, who started working at age 14, for inspiring his strong work ethic, and his mother for teaching him the value of kindness.
“I think being a good person gets you more places than just working hard,” Díez says. “The combination of both [has] really shaped me.”
Díez followed his older brother — Northeastern’s first student from Andorra — to Boston, drawn by the university’s diverse international student community and co-op opportunities.
As a child he aspired to be an inventor, eventually finding great interest in coding and joining a robotics club.
“I thought computer science was the closest thing to [being an inventor],” he says. “I love math, and code is beautiful. It’s really cool to look at it and see how for one problem, there’s 1,000 solutions.”
He studied computer science and mathematics at Northeastern’s Khoury College and completed two co-ops — one at a biotechnology company ISpecimen as a quality assurance engineer and another at Poloniex, a cryptocurrency exchange, as a software engineer.
He currently works as a founding engineer at Time Credit, a startup that developed an AI assistant for technical accountants.
Developing a mobile app was a steep learning curve, he says, but Northeastern gave him the foundation he needed to pick up new skills quickly. He also worked with freelance developers on front-end design.
Díez is currently focused on growing the app’s audiences across the U.S. He is actively looking for campus ambassadors to help spread the word. Eventually, he hopes to expand into Canada, Mexico and Spain.