Some days are amazing, some days are not, but you have to basically bring the same kind of energy to the process every day.

Interview by Mike Sullivan

 
Mike: Hey, everyone. I’m Mike Sullivan. This is MO.com, where we feature small business owners and entrepreneurs and bring you hints, tips, insights, and perspectives on what it takes to be successful. Joining me today are Hayward Majors and Andrew Ullman of CollegeSolved. Guys, thanks for joining me today. Can you tell us a little bit about what is CollegeSolved, and who is your target market?

Hayward:
I’ll start with this one. CollegeSolved is what we like to call the virtual personal college admission site. Really, it’s an opportunity to start your search for that right fit for college, whether it’s a two or four-year school, and start narrowing down those options. But what’s great is we then take it beyond just the typical search and help you find the really personal way of figuring out what’s right, whether it’s talking to one of our admissions experts, who are the small business owners that have been helping students find that right college for their whole career, often were former admissions officers, or something like that. As well as, we have a network of current college students who can talk about what the life on campus is really like, and see if you would fit in there, your personality really fits in.

Andrew:
Hayward describes sort of the offline, personal connecting tools that we have, and online totally free for the user. We also allow you tell us a little bit about yourself, build up a list of colleges, compare that list of colleges and see how you fit in, see how you stack up to see if you are potentially a good candidate and a good fit for that school. So, to answer the question about our target audience, they would be juniors and seniors in high school, or potentially freshmen and sophomores who are getting a jump on the game. The high school kids, themselves, are our core target audience, but also parents, telling their students and their children about this is important for us as well.

Mike:
Tell me a little bit about yourselves and about the creation of the company. Let’s start with Hayward.

Hayward:
We actually have very different, but in a way, similar backgrounds. I am a former attorney. I practiced at Simpson Thatcher, and then Weil Gotshal in New York. So I did the big corporate law firm experience. Between those two times, I actually went back and got my MBA and studied both finance and entrepreneurship during that time. So that’s really where I got my bug for the entrepreneurship.

Andrew:
I went to the University of Michigan. After I graduated from there, I moved to China for my first job and had an interesting experience where I guess I was kind of an intrapreneur, as they called it, where I was running a little division within a company straight out of school, not because I’m special or different or anything like that, but just because when I was in China, I was a native English speaker and I was working for an American company that was looking for somebody who could take on a role to basically liaise with U.S. customers. So, I kind of got the entrepreneurship bug from that experience, came back to the States, moved here to New York City, worked at Goldman Sachs for a couple of years, then went to a small private equity firm after that, and was kind of done with the finance thing after that. I met Hayward right after the Wall Street experience, and the two of us both recognized that we wanted to do something non-corporate, and we had the entrepreneurship bug. So it was good to have a partner to link up with and do that.

Mike:
You talked a little bit about meeting. Were you friends prior to being co-founders, and if so, how has that worked out for you?

Hayward:
We actually met about five years ago. The interesting thing is we met through a mutual friend of ours, and the first time we met was actually traveling through Africa and Europe. We realized after spending three weeks together traveling, that’s a good sign that we probably could also make it working on our own business together. So, we were friends for probably about two or three years before we started really talking about the specific idea. It actually, in my mind, has been a great benefit to have someone that I’ve known for a while before we even started this and know that I’m comfortable with both working with Andrew, but also on a social level, we were very comfortable together. In my mind, it was a perfect fit.

Andrew:
I would echo Hayward’s sentiments. There were stressful moments, and it’s better having those stressful moments with a friend, rather than a stranger, or somebody you don’t trust. I think one of the things that we recognized in each other is that even though we both have this entrepreneurship bug and that drive that sort of brings us together and makes us similar. But a lot of things make us very different, and that actually has helped us through the way. I have more of a finance background. Hayward has more of a legal background, although he kind of does everything. When we were out looking for investors, he brings a certain type of investor from a certain part of the country to the table, versus I’m from the West Coast, and I bring a different type of person to the table. So, those are the differences, and the fact that we are friends and were friends before we started this has actually been very helpful.

Hayward:
And to add to that, we’ve been able to recognize from the very beginning what our differences are and what we were able to bring to the table. We knew that going in, which has been great.

Mike:
What are some of the challenges you’ve experienced in running an online business?

Andrew:
Running your own show, whatever it is as a first-time entrepreneur is just extremely difficult. I think one of the things is this business is like a roller coaster, basically. That’s one of the things that we talk about all the time. Some days are amazing, some days are not, but you have to basically bring the same kind of energy to the process every day. That’s one thing that there are so many emotional highs and emotional lows, but you have to sort of be mellow and flat line about the whole thing.

I guess I would say, secondly, to use a finance analogy, starting up a company is a lot like private equity, and the opposite of the financial markets or a hedge fund, meaning, if you work at a hedge fund, you know where your stocks have closed every day, and you get your report card at 4:00 p.m. every day. With a startup, you don’t know where you stand most of the time, other than those big days where you sign some sort of agreement or have some big announcement or you eventually get bought. So, struggling with just being sound of mind and not getting too overheated about certain things and trying to understand that it is a roller coaster and it’s a long path.

Hayward:
I think I’d add that one of the biggest struggles we’ve had is . . . you’ve heard our background. Neither of us mentioned technology in there. Being a web based company, that’s been, obviously, a big struggle for us. A few months ago, we were fortunate to find a chief technology officer who has come in-house and shown us how much easier it is having that technology in-house. We’ve had great experiences with outsourcing both overseas, as well as to technology people in the U.S., and that’s been amazing. But starting up this type of business without that in-house experience, it’s been night and day for us.

Mike:
What’s some of the feedback you guys have received from some of the students and parents that have used your service?

Hayward:
The one thing that we’ve heard over and over again is people are looking for that fit. So many times they have ideas of the right school they want, but they want to make sure they’re going to fit in, because it’s a big investment. One of the products that we do offer is what we call our Personality Wheel, and that’s taking the different personalities through surveys and other things we’ve done, of people on campus, and then pairing that up with where you fit in, but based on your answers to the survey. The feedback we’ve gotten on that is just no one else provides that exposure. “Okay, I’m not even there yet, but I know here’s a chunk of people on campus that I know are very similar to me.”

Andrew:
I think the space that we live in, college search and admissions, is so confusing, so complex that it’s the whole reason that we entered into this field. I think the experience is different for everybody, and luckily we have three core products, and we’ve heard positive feedback about all the products. But, if we did have to hone in on one particular thing that we do and that nobody else does, it’s what Hayward said. It’s offering that sort of how do you fit in with the personality of a particular school, and then also being able to pick up the phone and talk to a student at that school. So that’s something that we’re proud of that we haven’t heard of anybody else around that offers that, where you can say, “All right. I’m interested in potentially going to Dartmouth. Here are ten students in the CollegeSolved network at Dartmouth. This one is from 50 miles away from where I grew up. I’m going to pick up the phone and have a conversation with that kid, because they probably share a lot in terms of background and vision and goals with me.” We’ve heard a lot of good things about that.

Mike:
So, what’s next for CollegeSolved? Can you tell me what you guys are planning on next?

Hayward:
We’re actually in the process of doing a big revamp of the site, some really exciting, different products that we’re offering just to expand on our three main core areas. The user experience will be very easy. You’ll be able to get in there and compare things and really be able to see where you fit in very easily. That’s going to be rolling out in the next, probably, month or so. This is our exciting time, being in the fall. We’re pushing. We’re talking to people at the ground level, with guidance departments, and things like that, but also trying to reach out to national organizations.

Andrew:
Yeah, I think from a big picture standpoint, we haven’t had . . . fall and winter are our big seasons. We’re still a beta website, so we’re trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. The big, big picture thing is that we’re launching this website in September. So, I think it is going to be really fun, at least from everything that we have heard from other people in the education technology space, that the fall season is really fun to see what happens and where things shake out. After that, who knows? Luckily, things go really well, and the sky’s the limit.