Startup Spotlight #99: StudentSide

StudentSide is a platform intended to take the stress out of the college search process.

Mar 17, 2021

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I got the chance to speak with Dan Hepworth, co-founder and COO of StudentSide, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.

StudentSide is a platform connecting high school students with current college students to facilitate candid conversations about college life. StudentSide seeks to destress and demystify the college process by offering the authentic perspectives of current students!

He is a senior at Duke graduating two semesters early with a major in computer science and a minor in finance. Home for him is Long Island, New York, where he loves going fishing and hiking in his free time. Prior to StudentSide, Hepworth started a peer tutoring company in high school, The Massapequa Tutor. He is also a founding investor in Mystery Meals.

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Startup Spotlight: StudentSide

StudentSide co-founder and COO Dan Hepworth.

Problem: The problem is that the college search and application process is broken, and it's broken because most high school students don't have authentic information about the universities they are applying to and thus cannot assess what colleges would be a good fit. This results in over 51% of college students regretting their school choice and 25% transferring (I almost did!).

Market: In 2018, 2.2 million American high school graduates matriculated at a college, and the average student applies to 7-10 colleges.

Solution: Our solution is to enable high schoolers to look beyond the "pamphlets and propaganda" sent to them by universities by connecting them with current college students (who we call mentors!) whose interests are substantially more aligned. We aspire to have the perfect mentor for every student based on their hometown, background, academic interests, hobbies, and more!

Team: I'm joined by my co-founders Nick Dahlborg (CEO) and Simar Kohli (CTO). Nick attends Duke with me, and we got acquainted through Duke's Student Founders Program. Simar and I go a bit further back, as we debated competitively at rival high schools.

(Fun fact: In 2017, Simar and I joined forces and represented our Long Island league together on a Worlds Schools Debate team at the National Speech and Debate Association's 2017 National Tournament.)

Recent Success:

Hepworth: We've been really successful at growth-hacking our initial user base. Over the summer, with our MVP we were able to have a presence at 150+ college campuses and have 1,200+ college students on board to be a mentor. We facilitated 200+ conversations with high school students in free beta, and what was amazing to see was that over 90% of our mentor base was willing to volunteer their time in order to make these chats free to students! We acquired the supply side (college students) and demand-side (high school students) primarily through organic means. After exhausting our personal networks (I recall messaging every single one of my 800+ Facebook friends who was a college student!), we cold-emailed hundreds if not thousands of college students to convince them to join our mission. What proved to be fruitful as well as to pay college students a small incentive (~$5) to post in their college Facebook group, which typically has thousands of students at a particular school.

Recent Struggle:

Hepworth: We've struggled with the learning curve of being student founders, as we lack the experience of other founders, and there are always new things on the horizon that we not only have to understand but master to be able to keep moving forward. Fortunately, Duke's Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) resources have been super helpful. I took place in their summer accelerator and am currently a part of the Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurs fellowship program, which has given me the resources and community to grow as an entrepreneur.

Founder Advice:

Hepworth: Think lean. This article on the lean start-up methodology (shoutout to Salman Azhar's Duke in Silicon Valley class!) strongly influenced the way I think on a day-to-day basis. Most people's MVPs are really VPs - they're not minimum! Your goal when validating an idea or problem should be to maximize the learning and minimize the cost (time, money, etc.). The first MVP for StudentSide was a Google form and spreadsheet to validate the interest of both sides of the market. The second was a Wix site.

Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:

Hepworth: Here are three founders you should check out next!

Denna Huang, Founder of Mystery Meals: Mystery Meals makes food exploration easy.
Alex Cifuentes, Founder of Kalab: Kalab is a new social media platform that is centered around a new way and to hold giveaways and contests.
Julian Rachman, Founder & CEO of Ripplink: Ripplink is Superhuman for Contact Management.

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