The startup journey is a little different for everyone -- as is the path to funding.
For Melvin Hines, founder of Austin-based ed tech startup Upswing, both the idea to start a business and the company's recent funding started as a slow burn but quickly grew.
Long before creating a business entity, Hines learned how education could be a game-changer for his own family in southern Georgia. His dad graduated and, while Hines was in middle school, he sometimes sat outside classrooms while his mom earned her degree -- an experience that showed him the value and the hurdles of going back to school as a non-traditional student.
His parents' hard work helped put him on a path to graduate from the University of Georgia and, later, Duke University's law school.
“As I started moving along, I started to get interested in the idea of how to make these types of experiences a lot easier for those who are going back to school, especially those who are adults, have kids or are trying to get their degrees online," he said.
Hines got a shot at improving the situation shortly after he graduated. As a teacher of first year students a North Carolina Central University, he saw students dropping out early in their college journey -- and he thought there must be a way to improve retention and graduation rates.
As an instructor, he naturally started by focusing on individual students. But that had its limits.
“It would be great if there was a way to do something that was a little more on the scalable side," he recalled thinking. "Instead of helping 30 students, you could help 30,000 students.”
It was around that time he connected with co-founder Alex Pritchett and began building what would become Upswing, which uses interactive services and chatbots to increase engagement with students. The duo began working with a school system in Durham, North Carolina, on a pilot project -- a way to learn how students were interacting with the app and what was missing.
The opportunity to make an impact looked big, and Hines and Pritchett decided to begin working full-time on Upswing, with two rural community colleges in North Carolina as early adopters.
It has since expanded significantly. It moved to Austin in 2014, and it has added new colleges to its client list, raised a total of about $4.8 million and grown its team to about 30 people. It most recently announced a partnership with Clafin University, which became the 11th historically black college and university to team up with Upswing.
It has set a goal of helping 50,000 students who would have likely dropped out graduate. So far, it has helped retain 26,000, by the company's estimates.
“That to me is completely remarkable,” Hines said.
Hines also wants Upswing to help more students find jobs after school and support them throughout their student lifecycles and limit how much debt students take on.
Hines said Upswing's model focuses on reaching students with its virtual assistant, Anna, which sends nudges to students to stay on top of financial aid, tests and graduation deadlines. It also works to connect students with the right tutors, counselors and professors to get help by making it simple to quickly schedule meetings when people are available, which is also a bonus for student advisors who are often spread thin.
Hines said many of his fellow high school classmates didn't have a dual parent household like he had, and most of his peers' parents also didn't go to college. Of his class of 250, he said 68 graduated.
If more parents and their children had access to engaging resources and support, it's likely their life trajectories would be changed.
“If we can do our little part … to improve the outlook for these students, my hope is that we can stem the tide and break the cycle and have their kids have some of the same opportunities I had because of the sacrifice my parents made," he said.
Hines said he arrived in Austin about the time that Ed Tech Austin was gaining traction -- and as several other ed tech startups emerged in the local scene.
“It’s really awesome to have been here at the beginning of the ed tech revolution in Austin," he said.
