Sympify

Not the org’s website

Sympify.org explains what the organisation is and what it does, and the app itself lives at sympify.ai.

In the media

Two television segments on the launches, and the two videos submitted to the Congressional App Challenge.

This page is the other half: what it was like to build, how it changed shape, and the parts that do not fit on an about page.

The starting problem

Sympify began as a small reverse-dictionary prototype: instead of starting with a disease name and looking up its symptoms, a user could start with symptoms and receive a list of conditions worth discussing further with a clinician. I built the early version while learning more computational work at USC.

The first prototype was useful mainly as a proof of concept — it could show that the interaction was possible, but it was not yet accurate, complete, or robust enough to be treated as a clinical tool.

Turning a prototype into a team

The project stopped being a solo prototype once other students began joining with very different interests. Some cared about research, some about coding, some about outreach, and some about building chapters at their own schools.

We eventually organized the group into research, technical, business, and chapter leadership structures so that people could contribute without everyone doing the same thing. Learning to build that structure was as important as building the software itself.

Growing beyond one school

Growth came mostly through students who wanted to build something locally rather than simply join a central online team. Chapters gave them room to organize events, recruit members, and adapt the mission to their own communities while staying connected to the larger organization.

The challenge was creating enough structure to keep the work coherent without turning every chapter into a copy of the same club.

Building a place for younger students to lead

Instead of keeping every decision at the founder level, Sympify developed multiple layers of responsibility across departments, directors, chapter leaders, and local members. The goal was to make it possible for a new member to start with a concrete task, grow into ownership of a project, and eventually lead other students.

That structure also forced me to learn a harder version of delegation: giving someone enough context to make decisions without requiring them to ask me about every detail.

About the numbers

The figures on this page — 70+ members, 8 chapters, $55,000+, 8,520+ hours — are organisation-wide. 8,520+ hours is the total service contributed across Sympify, not Jalen’s personal hours, and the $55,000+ is organisation-wide funding rather than money raised personally.

Hours are reported by each member and by the director directly above them, which is what makes the total verifiable.