EduLender, a midVenturesLAUNCH COMPETE company, recently got Series A funding by Hyde Park Angels. According to a recent press release, “HPA is joined by Sandbox Ventures, LP, New World 2010, LLC, KD Capital N.A. LTD., Excelerate, LLC, and multiple individual angels including Sam Yagan, co-founder and CEO of Sparknotes and OKCupid. HPA’s Tony Wilkins will join the board.” We had a chance to speak with the founder and CEO, Sue Khim, where we learned why comparing loans is so important, EduLender’s journey to funding and how dating websites can be used for so much more.
EduLender is the college financing comparison search engine that every prospective and current student needs. Period. (Former students can expect to see student loan consolidation services and products being rolled out soon.) Students aren’t the only ones. “For schools, EduLender provides a comprehensive, unbiased, and independent site that is ideal for financial aid offices that want to refer their students to a neutral resource,” reads the press release. Even just a couple of years ago, there were no egalitarian comparison sites for student loans that made it easy to choose and research. Sue Khim was a student at the University of Chicago when she realized the same thing. “Getting a bad rate on a loan can be really expensive,” Ms. Khim told midVentures in an interview on Wednesday. “For me, as a student, it was hard to see past all of the spam in my email inbox and wade through all of the information. The few comparison sites I found only showed a few lenders that were paying the comparison site to be listed there – I felt like a victim. I was seeing their best advertisers instead of the best rates.” She admits it hasn’t been an easy or short road to solve this problem, but she also knew that “the student loan industry was in turmoil and college and graduate students everywhere were faced with a huge problem in getting loans.” These series A funding will help pay for business development and marketing expenses. “We’re now able to really scale our infrastructure and accelerate the release of new products and features,” Sue said. We were curious as to how she got to where she is today; what fueled her to continue down this path, and we’re sure we aren’t the only ones. We let her run with it.
“I conceived of the idea for EduLender in 2008. I was still in college at the time, in my junior year. I competed in New Venture Challenge and Entrepreneur Idol as EduLender, although it was an entirely different business model at the time. After NVC, my team at the time and I were putting together operations and we were in the thick of raising professional financing. In Fall 2009, I took a leave of absence for my senior year at University of Chicago to continue working on EduLender full-time. That winter, EduLender’s lead prospect for professional funding fell through,” Sue said.
Once the funding fell through, so did the team and they parted ways. She was handling EduLender by herself. Sue explained that, to make matters worse, she was left to support both of her parents and her brother (and still is). With only a part-time job, it made things extremely difficult. She started working as a freelance programmer through the entire winter. EduLender was put on the backburner. “I was having a hard time finding people to work with,” she continued. “I’m pretty picky. Recruiting job boards can be expensive, but after I had exhausted my extended network, I got creative. I began using OKCupid to find developer entrepreneurs in Chicago.” That certainly wasn’t the answer we were expecting when we asked how she found local entrepreneurs in the city, but it certainly worked. “I met Sam who is now our lead programmer and one of the co-founding members of EduLender,” Sue stated. “We applied and were accepted to Excelerate Tech Incubator which changed my life and catapulted the company.”
EduLender hopes to shed light on student loans, make people realize that it isn’t just large names that lend money; credit unions, state programs and charities all provide solid loans at affordable rates. For those considering student loan consolidation, Sue encourages “anyone who is thinking about consolidating to sign up to get an invite for (our) consolidation beta – we’ll be inviting a small group of the early signups to use the service for free in exchange for detailed feedback on their user experience.” Would she do it all over again? Ms Khim commented, “Knowing what I know now about how hard it was to start EduLender, I’m not sure that I would be able to do it again. That said, I couldn’t be happier about how far we’ve come. It’s been a wild ride, but I’ve loved it.” Thank you Sue for taking the time to speak with us. We look forward to hearing about additional closings through early March! On a final note, EduLender is hiring:
We have a great work culture and we're currently recruiting a smart, motivated person for sales and relationship management. We can be contacted at [email protected]
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