Cyrus David '07 created covidping.com, a site on which you can sign up for a free daily email report that keeps track of the rise and fall of COVID-19 in your state. The service utilizes daily numbers provided by The COVID Tracking Project , which is among the most trusted COVID-19 data sources in the U.S.
Tell us about the service you created and what it does.
Subscribing to covidping.com gets you a daily email with any state's officially reported
COVID-19 statistics over the past 24 hours, along with some pre-calculated trending.
The data is provided by The COVID Tracking Project, which compiles data from every
state on a daily basis. It's just a really simple way to keep track of the rise and
fall of COVID-19 in any U.S. state.
Where did the idea come from?
I was visiting multiple sites every day, trying to figure out which data sources to
trust and having to remember what time the data was updated just to stay current.
When I thought about it, a daily email that does all of that work for me was what
I wanted so I went ahead and built it.
How much has this grown since you launched?
After sharing it with friends and tweeting about it, the service somehow spread to
more than 1,000 subscribers across all 50 states in just a few weeks.
Is this meant to generate revenue? Or is this purely a public service?
It's completely free to subscribe, but I've partnered with a number of nonprofits
to provide covidping.com subscribers with opportunities to give back. This crisis
has significantly worsened the desperation that our weak and vulnerable populations
had already been facing and it's time for the rest of us to step up.
What have you done professionally since graduating from Binghamton?
Most of my career has focused on tech. I spent my first three post-Binghamton years
at Google, then worked at a couple of startups before starting my first company, and
most recently decided to take a break from entrepreneurship to join Arena as head
of product management. It has been a wild ride to say the least.
What Binghamton experiences were particularly influential to your career path?
Everything from my entrepreneurship class with Angelo Mastrangelo, to running the
Escape bus service, participating in Students in Free Enterprise, interacting with
several helpful alumni via the Alumni Career Network and so many other things. I look
back fondly on all of it to this day.
A screenshot of New York’s latest report appears below. You can subscribe to free
daily emails like this for any state at covidping.com.
