CollegeVine Secures $24 Million In Series B Funding To Continue Its Disruption Of The College Guidance Industry With Affordable And Effective Solutions
Apr 01, 2019, 00:00 ET
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 1, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, CollegeVine, the leading provider of affordable, data-driven high school guidance and college admissions advising, announced it has secured $24 million in Series B funding from Maywood Street Investments (Maywood"), Fidelity Investments ("Fidelity"), Morningside Technology Ventures ("Morningside"), and University Ventures ("UV"). Using over a million data points to power and propel their technology, CollegeVine has helped over 10,000 students navigate the path into college, making it the largest marketplace for college advisory services in the country.
"The pricing in the college advising industry can get outrageous. Our mission is to bring data tools to families and drive down costs to expand access," said Jon Carson, the CEO of CollegeVine. "We plan to use the Series B investment to expand our data science and engineering teams and to support our ability to bring affordable services to families making one of the most consequential decisions in their lifetime."
CollegeVine's mission is to address the increasingly significant college guidance gap in U.S. public high schools, where the average student typically receives 38 minutes of guidance over four years even as they confront a high degree of information asymmetry in college selection. Approximately ninety-one percent of its customers are public school students and packages start at less than one-thousand dollars. CollegeVine provides them the tools to not only navigate the high school to college journey and but also recommends the highest ROI schools to minimize debt and improve career outcomes.
"We felt CollegeVine was affordable and offered the best value for the investment," said Christine Sloss, the mother of a CollegeVine student. "They helped us negotiate the offer from my son's first choice school, and got us a significant boost in aid. CollegeVine was a gift for our family. The amazing advice and emotional support they gave us was worth every penny and more."
"CollegeVine is leading the way in creating an affordable, data-driven approach to decision making for students hoping to get into college," said Daniel Pianko, University Ventures Managing Director.
CollegeVine's $6.7 million Series A round of funding was led by Morningside with participation by UV and Silicon Valley Bank.
About CollegeVine
CollegeVine is a technology services platform that enables public high school families to navigate the college admissions process using data. With software powered by millions of past student data points, CollegeVine intelligently analyzes colleges based on students' odds of acceptance and recommends the highest ROI schools to minimize debt and improve career outcomes. Families can also choose to receive affordable personalized guidance from an ecosystem of hundreds of expert admissions consultants recruited from the nation's top universities. Consultants use CollegeVine's guidance technology to triple their clients' odds of acceptance and increase their average scholarship awards by $25,000. With a data-driven model that enables affordable, high quality advising to families, CollegeVine has helped over 10,000 students navigate the path to college. For more information, visit www.collegevine.com.
About Maywood Street Investments
Maywood is the personal investing vehicle for Ken Shi. Ken Shi is a founding partner of Morningside Capital is one of the leading VC investors in China. Ken's firm in China, Morningside Capital/Morningside Venture Capital ("Morningside"), is one of the earliest and most successful institutions in China to engage in early-stage venture capital and currently has billions of dollars under management including both USD fund and RMB fund. Morningside's LP's include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, fund of funds, university endowment, etc. Morningside's successful investments include Sohu.com, Ctrip.com, the 9, China Distance Education, Xunlei, Phoenix New Media, UCWeb, YY, Xiaomi Corp, and more. Morningside has offices in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.
About Fidelity Investments
Fidelity's mission is to inspire better futures and deliver better outcomes for the customers and businesses we serve. With assets under administration of $7.3 trillion, including managed assets of $2.6 trillion as of February 28, 2019, we focus on meeting the unique needs of a diverse set of customers: helping more than 30 million people invest their own life savings, 22,000 businesses manage employee benefit programs, as well as providing more than 13,500 financial advisory firms with investment and technology solutions to invest their own clients' money. Privately held for more than 70 years, Fidelity employs more than 40,000 associates who are focused on the long-term success of our customers. For more information about Fidelity Investments, visit https://www.fidelity.com/about.
About Morningside Technology Ventures
Morningside Technology Ventures was founded in 1986, by the Chan family of Hong Kong, to make private equity and venture capital investments. The group is managed by investment professionals who are entrepreneurial, have deep industry knowledge and are effective in the local environment in which they operate. In addition to its investment activities, Morningside Technology Ventures is strongly committed to social responsibility.
About University Ventures
University Ventures (UV) is a leading investment firm focused exclusively on the global higher education sector. The fund is led by principals with decades of collective experience as entrepreneurs, investors and leaders in higher education. With the greatest respect for the values, quality and traditions of academic institutions, UV is playing a formative and constructive role in the private sector's increasing involvement in the future of higher education. Our carefully selected investor base comprises a broad spectrum of stakeholders in higher education across the US, Europe and Asia.
Contact: Francy Wade
(857) 891-2715
SOURCE CollegeVine