The Champu story began in 2013 when three former college classmates got the bug to start a business about a year after graduating. Co-founder and CEO Siddharth Jain was hard at work in a Wall Street job that he says “didn’t have a lot of heart” and was itching to do something entrepreneurial and meaningful. Meanwhile, Siddharth's former college roommate Mike Driscoll was tinkering with the earliest iteration of the champu.in website, which would let people upload graphics onto t-shirts and buy them as special keepsakes. Though Mike was returning to grad school, he had a handful of eager customers, and talked with Siddharth about launching the “design online” website into a legitimate business. Siddharth contacted another former classmate and computer whiz, Dave Christenson. Marc spent long hours on his green couch (a hand-me-down from his big brother) talking to Dave on the phone and planning the business, and figuring out ways to make designing and buying custom t-shirts fun, easy, and reliable. In March 2013, Champu was officially launched with a small team of “Inkers” running the show - all from different backgrounds - but with big hearts.