a note from us
adventure education, bagpiping, pop music, fermentation sciences, floral management — what do they all have in common?
believe it or not, they’re all college majors 🎓
no matter the major, all college/university students deal with the headache of planning out their schedules to fulfill their degree requirements 🤦🏻♀️
almost any college student could walk you through this logistical nightmare; some classic lines include:
“i’ve met with my advisor 5 times this week”
“i’m changing my major”
“i forgot about that distribution requirement”
this week’s company, Stellic, is here to save students and institutions a lot of stress
in a sentence
Stellic is a planning and advising software for universities and colleges to provide their students with a suite of solutions, making it the one-stop shop for managing a degree
constructing a semester’s schedule, blueprinting a degree path, and advisory capabilities…these services are stellar
bulleted version: think of degree planning like solving a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle while blindfolded…Stellic removes the blindfold and gives you an extra set of hands
the basics
industry: edtech 📚 💻
headquarters: Palo Alto, CA 🕶
year founded: 2016 (originally a student project in 2015)
company size: < 50 employees 💼
notable clients: Carnegie Mellon, Tufts, Duke
some notable investors: Reach Capital, Rethink Education, Operator Collective, Bisk Ventures, Good AI Capital
amount raised: 💰 13.4M
due diligence
what we like
upgrading an antiquated system: if you take a look at the registration platforms most schools are using, you would think they were products of the start of the dot-com era 🦖
Stellic fills the need for an easy-to-navigate, collaborative, and stress-free platform
avoiding the edtech/corona bump: while Stellic benefited from schools investing in remote resources, their solutions will outlast the edtech bubble
college spending is out of control: thanks to sky-high tuitions, college spending is exponentially growing; administrations will be held accountable to invest in their students experience 💵
potential risks
institutional bureaucracy: legacy systems are often slow to change at many colleges and universities; implementing Stellic may be a radical change
where’s the boom?: founded in 2016, Stellic still works with a handful of colleges; we’re waiting for the company to skyrocket like today’s edtech unicorns 🦄
edtech concerns: until recently, investors approached edtech with hesitancy, seeing it as a slow-moving, risky industry
founder profiles
Sabih Bin Wasi (ceo, prev. project lead @ Foodate)
Rukhsar Neyaz Khan (coo, prev. software engineer @ Alfardan Group)
Jiyda Moussa, (prev. backend engineer @ Stellic, now software engineer @ Kandji)
comps
why Stellic:
a college degree is critical for many entry level jobs and despite rapid growth in edtech, degree planning has stayed relatively stagnant…until now
Stellic was made for students, by students