Preston Silverman on Building out a Marketplace in Education - at YC Edtech Night

Hello everyone. Good evening. Thanks for having me! Really excited to be here. So, I'm the founder and CEO of Raise Me. We're focused on expanding access to higher education by rethinking the way that students access scholarships and grant funding for college.

We think this is really important because since the recession, over eighty percent of jobs that have been created in the US require some form of a college degree. But at the same time, as Tim mentioned earlier, the cost of education has been rising dramatically. Millions of students and families are questioning whether it's a viable path for them and how they can afford it.

One thing that we saw early on is that in the U.S., we're already awarding over a hundred billion dollars every year in scholarships and grants to help students pay for college. But historically, that money hasn't been awarded until after students are supposed to have already decided whether and where to apply to college.

For many students, that's too late to impact their college ambitions or their application decisions. As a result, many students check out much earlier or just assume that it's not a viable path for them, even though they might be eligible for thousands of dollars in aid that could help them in their journey.

So, the basic premise behind Raise Me is: what if instead of waiting until after a student has already applied and been accepted to a college to award this aid, what if we enabled them to accrue it as they go throughout high school based on their individual progress and development, their unique skills and talents?

That way, we could create a more transparent and empowering system for students, giving them access to these funds earlier before they have to make these decisions so they can be more confident pursuing their college and career goals.

We just finished our third school year; we're going into our fourth school year. Last year, we awarded over a billion dollars—nearly a billion and a half dollars—in scholarships and grants through the platform to students all over the country, which we're really excited about.

A billion dollars? Congratulations! That's awesome!

So, you've been at it, what, three, four years? Entering our fourth school year?

For the school year but how long have you been at it?

Five years.

Five years! So, maybe take us through what you were doing before Raise Me, and then how did you come to the decision to start this, and what was that process like?

So, when I first graduated university, I worked for a strategy consulting and research firm that was a small boutique firm. It was kind of a start-up in itself, and you know, one of the reasons I was attracted to that was I got to work on a lot of different industries. It was international, so I worked in a lot of different countries and got exposed to and learned a lot.

But after a few years, I felt like I wanted to, you know, have more direct impact. A lot of our work ended up being put together in a PowerPoint presentation and sent off, and I wanted to, you know, really tackle something more hands-on. I've always been really passionate about education as a means of creating opportunity for people.

So, as I was trying to think through what was next for me, I went and taught at a high school in India. I was teaching high school juniors and seniors, and so I ended up talking to them a lot about their plans for after they graduate, going to college, paying for it, reflecting on my own experience trying to navigate that process and had the idea for Raise Me there.

I just started doing a lot of research and trying to validate it and then applied to what was—you were then calling it—AT12 and moved to California for that.

So you moved to India? I'm sorry, from India to California for this?

Yeah, I didn't realize that.

So getting into the program was kind of the threshold, if you will, to get it started?

No, I mean, I had already at that point committed to it, and I think regardless of whether I was admitted or not, I was going to do it. But that was the icing on the cake.

And so you're a solo founder, but at the time, you weren't? So when...