Startup Spotlight #47: ClassRanked
ClassRanked is an online registration resource platform providing guidance and support to students building class schedules.
Latest F2F Case Study - Case Study: Nabis Achieved And Maintained Product-Market Fit In The $16 Billion Cannabis Market Through Customer Obsession
I got the chance to speak with Hayden Hall, founder and CEO of ClassRanked, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.
Hall is the founder & CEO of ClassRanked. After working at few startups and in big tech, Hall started ClassRanked following his own frustrations with college class registration. Combining his interest in design, software, and business - Hall launched the site that offers rankings, reviews, and grade distribution data to help students choose their classes. ClassRanked has caught fire. The company is live at over 350 colleges and universities with hundreds of thousands of active monthly users. Hall and his team believe that they are solving tangible student issues and are poised to take on the edtech industry to continue to provide solutions to students who need them.
Startup Spotlight: ClassRanked
ClassRanked founder and CEO Hayden Hall.
Problem: Every year, college students choose their classes but are left in the dark in terms of which courses are the easiest or offer the best quality. Existing tools are outdated and lack objective data on course outcomes.
Market: Over 20 million students attended colleges and universities in the US during the 2019-2020 school year. These students are left to rely on subjective advice and antiquated solutions to build their class schedules.
Solution: ClassRanked is revolutionizing course registration. We offer rankings of classes based on over 500 million grade distribution data points. By offering reliable data on course outcomes, verified user reviews, syllabi/class material banks, and course recommendation tools - ClassRanked gives students all the information they need to make an informed decision on how to maximize their time in college.
Team: Dilan Trivedi, who has worked as an analyst at Oak Hill, DE Shaw, and Apollo, is our CFO. Max Labaton, a Schwarzman Scholar and former US State Department official in the US Embassy in Peru, serves as our Chief Marketing & Communications Officer. The three of us met freshman year at Duke and lived together all 4 years.
Recent Success:
Hall: What has been really exciting and impressive to see has been the way in which our team has been able to scale our company. When we started, there were three of us working out of our college dorm room - operating only at our school. We are now live at over 350 universities, have hundreds of thousands of monthly active users, and an ambassador network of over 450 influential students at colleges around the country. That is a testament to the great team we have as well as the power of the problem we are solving.
Recent Struggle:
Hall: Our biggest struggle currently is finding the balance between our team’s emphasis on business/user growth and continuing to innovate with our current product. Like many startups, we have a small team with limited time and resources. Putting our efforts towards marketing the site takes away from our work iterating on our current design, updating our functionality, and adding new features our users will enjoy. Striking that balance between our development team’s passion for solving college students’ problems and the necessary work on the business side of growing and creating sustainable models for the future has been a challenge we continue to face
Founder Advice:
Hall: My biggest piece of advice would be to endure the tough times and to continue to have courage. I think back to a year and a half ago, my cofounders and I were working over the summer at various companies before we had gone full time on ClassRanked. We would work 9-5 and then after a long day, from 6 pm to 3 am would come together to build on the progress of ClassRanked. These were difficult times with long hours and little reward at first. What got us through was knowing that we had built an exceptional product that was going to help the lives of college students. Remind yourself that you believe in what you have created and know that you can make a serious impact. Lastly, it took courage for us to turn down full-time offers and work full force on ClassRanked but it was one of the best decisions we could have made. Have the courage to choose the more difficult path knowing it will pay off in the end.
Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:
Hall: Here are three founders you should check out next!
Helena Merk, Co-Founder of Glimpse: Glimpse is a video chat that matches users during virtual events to foster small one-on-one conversations.
Dan Hepworth, Co-Founder of Student Side: Student Side is a resource that helps high school students when applying to college.
Josh Farahzad, Founder of What I’m Building: What I’m Building is a tech company that offers a project-centric network for sharing process documentation.
Who should I profile next? Leave your suggestion in the comments:
Why you should become a paid subscriber to Founder to Founder:
Get connected to elite tech entrepreneurs through in-depth Founder Case Studies
Receive exclusive documents crafted by top founders on how to build your company
Access a growing audience of venture capitalists, product managers, software engineers, and people passionate about technology
Hear real, raw experiences from entrepreneurs that you won’t see anywhere else
Previous F2F Case Studies:
Case Study: Vizy CEO Amos Gewirtz Figured Out How To Increase User Engagement Of Their Product
Case Study: Doppler (backed by Sequoia) CEO Brian Vallelunga Found Growth By Killing A Product
Case Study: Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt On How His Startup Achieved Product-Market Fit
Case Study: Segment President Ilya Volodarsky On How To Effectively Use Data Analytics In A Startup
Case Study: Behind The Fundraising And Founder Success with Instabug's Omar Gabr
Case Study: Paragon CTO Ishmael Samuel Reflects On How He Chose His Cofounder
Latest Forbes Articles:
Assured Automates Information Collection For Auto Insurance Claims
DeckRobot Raises $1.5 Million To Generate PowerPoint Slides Using AI
Emailio, A Y Combinator Productivity Startup, Fixes Your Bad Email Habits
If you enjoyed this article, feel free to check out my other work on LinkedIn and my personal website, frederickdaso.com. Follow me on Twitter @fredsoda, on Medium @fredsoda, and on Instagram @fred_soda.