“Have Conviction, Give a Shit.” Spark! Alum’s Journey From Idea to Launch
When the rose colored glasses are removed, the cost of college dissuades even the most promising students from attending. “It’s my personal goal to make college accessible for everybody,” Spark! alum Vipul Patel said.
Patel is fulfilling that goal with his start-up, Tasseled. Tasseled allows for students to take lower cost college courses at thousands of schools nationwide in order to have those credits transferred to their target school.
During his own transfer process, Patel lost an entire semester of credits. By creating a course-matching algorithm during his appeal, he proved that his classes from Florida Institute of Technology were transferable, prompting BU to reinstate his credits.
That experience led to the early-stage development of Tasseled (previously known as JustTransfer), which the public first became aware of during his Demo Day presentation in 2017.
“While I was at Spark!, I learned not only just the product design process but the iterative thinking behind it,” Patel said, even crediting Spark! Director Ziba Cranmer for his impending successes.
“I don’t have a lot of people in my life that I can call and ask a question or even a favor, and Ziba has been that person,” he said. Cranmer ultimately connected Patel with Phil Libin, BU alum and Co-founder and CEO of product studio, All Turtles.
Tasseled is now a member of that same product studio that helped him raise $750,000 in funding. The platform is currently in private best testing in the New York City area.
“I hope we get everyone as close to net zero, if not net zero. That’s where we want to go — streamlining the process and making it easier for anybody to go to college,” Patel said.
When it comes to the future Spark! entrepreneurs that will follow Patel, “The day to day is not fun, but it’s incredibly fulfilling,” he said. “You’ll never question why you’re doing what you’re doing. The only thing I tell students is like, have conviction, give a shit, and I don’t know, try and do things the right way. A lot of people are going to give you a lot of advice. And one of the hardest things is parsing which one to take.”
Those interested can likely give Tasseled a try during the early part of 2022.