Building out a Marketplace in Education

Silverman says college costs can make students question whether higher education is affordable, even though the U.S. awards more than $100 billion in scholarships and grants each year. Much of that aid arrives after students have made key decisions about applying. RaiseMe lets students accrue aid during high school based on their progress, skills, and talents.

Silverman spent three to six months testing ideas for where funding should come from, including crowdsourcing, foundations, corporations, and colleges. RaiseMe ultimately started with higher education institutions. He says having funds helped attract students, while building density in particular regions helped balance the marketplace.

Silverman describes product-market fit as a gradual process, gaining confidence when thousands of students signed up. RaiseMe’s first fundraising round took over a year; the team bootstrapped with his savings and later won a $100,000 Gates Foundation-sponsored grant. After pausing fundraising to build the product and sign partners, the team returned to investors with more evidence of traction.

In the early days, Silverman spent most of his non-fundraising time on customer interviews, research, prototypes, and selling to colleges and teachers. As CEO, he now focuses on setting strategy, aligning the team, recruiting, and keeping the company funded. He says patience and resilience matter: identify what is not working quickly, but do not treat every setback as a reason to abandon the company.

Silverman points to limited guidance and mentorship as another barrier, noting that a high school counselor may serve 600 students and have only 20 minutes with each one. He wants students to get more help navigating college and career decisions, with greater attention to the skills they need as content changes. His goal is for RaiseMe to support students across the U.S., and eventually elsewhere, from early high school through college.