Sydney Kelleher's Contact Details

Sydney Kelleher's Company Details

University Research & Review

Boca Raton, FL, US • 5 - 9 Employees
Education/Training

Our founder, an entrepreneur since 1974, was CEO of a small university in the Southeast U.S from 2005 until late 2010. He then began talking with others – former university presidents, provosts, professors, higher education entrepreneurs – about an idea he had to improve the process whereby an individual selected a college or university. This was followed by research into how students, especially those older than 23, selected a college or colleges to which an application was submitted. The process was haphazard, time consuming, confusing and expensive if multiple applications were submitted. Many times applications were rejected. Colleges had complete control of the process; we though this was wrong and set about to change it. We looked outside the higher education envelope and studied what was being done by innovators in other sections of the economy. Two things caught our attention. One was the use of online platforms to make excess media space and programming slots available to advertisers who bid on the space and spots. They called this a "programmatic exchange," and we studied it closely. The other thing that we looked at were the online meet/date sites like match.com. The "dating" sites brought two interested parties together using a proprietary selection process, charged a fee, and let the parties take things from there. We then combined the two, one an online marketplace, the other a "bridge" between interested parties, and initiated the design and programming process required to develop a new paradigm for bot side of the equation: the college recruiting process, and the student school selection process. On November 21, 2016, we launched CollegeLeadExchange.com (the school-facing service) and during March 2017 we expect to launch WhatsBestforMe.com (the public-facing service). The results: The processes of recruiting students and students selecting a school are flipped. Students are now in control and schools' marketing challenges were reduced.