What if?, the Concourse Global team asked.
What if high school counselors had a tool they could give their students, where all they have to do is create a profile with their test scores, grades and interests.
What if those profiles – scrubbed of personal information such as names – were viewable by college admissions officers desperate for new populations of students.
“What if you could get real college admissions offers?” said Joe Morrison, the startup’s founder and CEO. “All of a sudden it’s universities going after students and saying, ‘We want you.’ The students say, ‘I accept or decline your invitation.' ”
Or, put more succinctly, “There’s no application anymore,” Morrison said.
That was the pivot early in the pandemic that launched Concourse Global on a new track for growth that has Morrison excited about the broad disruptive potential of his startup company.
Concourse Global now works with 120 universities and is planning a dedicated growth push in major U.S. markets over the next year.
The company was featured this June in prominent college/university publication Inside Higher Ed, and it was also noted this year in a joint report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling and National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators about access and equity in the admissions.
“I think this is going to become the de facto standard for how students get into college,” Morrison said, “and I think it’s going to be us as a leader in this space.”
Concourse Global was created in 2017 as a spinout from Grok Global, founded by Morrison’s wife, Kim. The company, which raised $2 million in venture capital in 2018, initially created a communications platform between potential college attendees and recruiters.
Morrison said that idea had some traction, but the key to the new model are high school counselors. They are primarily responsible for preparing hundreds of students for their post-secondary journeys – often helping one student file as many as 10 traditional college applications.
Concourse Global simply makes that process more efficient. Students also file information about their financial information, so the offers from colleges come with financial aid, grants and scholarship proposals that are personalized to the individual student. Morrison said the platform has been recognized as a tool that can help create access to higher education from underprivileged communities.
Last year, the couple relocated from Brooklyn to the Elmwood Village in Buffalo, a move to be closer to their parents in Ontario, Canada.
Joe Morrison said the couple took a two-day test drive in October that included dinners at Trattoria Aroma on Bryant Street and Las Puertas on Rhode Island Street. On the second night, as they strolled together down Ashland Avenue, they came decision.
“We said, ‘This is beautiful,' ” Morrison said. “Let’s live here.”
Concourse Global is now officially headquartered in Buffalo, though its eight full-time staffers have always worked remotely. Morrison said he will consider doing more hiring here to support the expansion of the business, with new hires projected in technical, business and sales roles.
“We think colleges should be coming to students instead of the other way around,” he said. “We are the most advanced and successful experiment of that nature, but everybody’s talking about it in the industry.”
