About CribCub
Three students, one frustrated RA, and the realization that the tools meant to help residence life were the very things slowing it down. CribCub started where it still lives — in conversation with the people doing the work.
The problem
A Resident Advisor's job is a real job: community manager, first responder, event coordinator, accountability partner. It comes with quiet hours, G-Chats, lockouts, duty rotations, incident reports, and the genuine work of helping college students figure out how to live independently.
And what do RAs use to do it? A group chat nobody reads. A paper sign-in sheet. A Google spreadsheet that lives on one person's laptop. A flyer taped to the wall that's gone by Tuesday.
The result is exactly what you'd expect: RAs working harder than they need to, residents who don't know what's happening on their floor, and ResLife administrators flying blind on the metrics that matter to them.
Why now
Universities are investing in residence life like never before — student retention, mental health, sense of belonging on campus. The expectations placed on RAs have quietly tripled.
Meanwhile the students moving into those dorms grew up with Instagram, WhatsApp, Discord, and iMessages. They have an instinct for what software built with care looks like, and an instinct for what a scrappy GroupMe and a PDF looks like. CribCub bets that residence life deserves software in the first category.
Our approach
Built by people who’ve lived it
One of us is starting as an RA next year. We’re not consultants who interviewed three RAs — we’re the ones living the role and the dorm.
Treat the role as a real job, which it is
Every screen in CribCub assumes the RA is a professional doing professional work. We don’t make them prove they need the feature.
Make the boring stuff invisible
G-Chat tracking, duty logs, incident reports — these should take seconds, not evenings after homework. The fewer minutes spent administrating, the more spent connecting with residents.
Build for trust, then for growth
ResLife software touches student data. We’re designing toward FERPA from the ground up, not retrofitting compliance later.