Jordan Goldman

Jordan Goldman
Residence	New York, New York
Education	Wesleyan University, University of Oxford
Occupation	CEO (tech industry)
Website	http://www.jordangoldman.com

Jordan Goldman is an internet executive and entrepreneur.

He has been named "One of the Top 30 Young Entrepreneurs in America" by Inc. Magazine,^[1] "One of the Top 100 Young Entrepreneurs in America" by the White House,^[2] "One of the 100 Most Influential People in NYC Business and Technology" by Business Insider,^[3] and "One of the 13 Faces of NYC Tech" by PBS.^[4]

Goldman is best known for writing a successful series of books published by Penguin Books,^[5] for founding, serving as CEO and selling two technology companies with several million users, and for building significant business relationships with media companies including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report and McGraw-Hill. He has been called an expert in product strategy, sales strategy and business development.^[6]

Early career

At 18 years old, Goldman built an online survey asking current college students to tell him what their colleges were really like. More than 30,000 current students weighed in with detailed responses.^[7]

Goldman edited the results into a 704-page college guide profiling schools across America, including some explicit content. He was signed by the literary agency Janklow & Nesbit Associates and the title was picked up by Penguin Books, the world’s second largest publisher.^[8]

Chuck Hughes, Senior Admissions Officer at Harvard, wrote the book’s preface and called it “the result of a virtual grassroots movement, spurred on by the power of the Internet and the power of student networks ... friends told friends, news spread from school to school.” Hughes described the finished product as “a new kind of guidebook … providing detailed, nuanced, personal and honest portraits of schools … the next best thing to spending a week on campus.”^[9]

Students' Guide to Colleges was released nationwide and featured in Time Magazine, Forbes and U.S. News & World Report.^[10] Goldman and Penguin turned the book into a series, released in five annually updated editions.^[11]

Education

Goldman launched new surveys, edited student submissions and prepared new versions of Students’ Guide while he was a student. Goldman studied English Literature at Wesleyan University (graduating with honors), at Oxford University and at the University of East Anglia (MA).^[5]

Unigo

Concept

After completing his studies Goldman stopped publishing Students’ Guide and founded a new, online business called Unigo. Unigo gave current college students online tools to review their schools and continually document their college lives using text, photos and videos.^[12]

Goldman built an invite-only prototype and recruited a team of interns on 300 college campuses to launch outreach campaigns. Within 90 days more than 45,000 current college students sent in contributions.^[13]

When Unigo opened to the public it received 1.35 million page-views in its first week live.^[14]

Critical Response

NPR said “Unigo just made print college guidebooks obsolete. It is a massive, all online, all student-generated effort with fifty times the content of any book or website that exists. Its college reviews are bracingly honest.”^[15]

The New York Times said "one measure of an idea's greatness is how obvious it seems in retrospect ... the volume and quality of Unigo’s reviews make it impossible for traditional guidebooks to compete. Unigo’s reviews are so evocative they make the one-page U.S. News summaries read like junk mail.”^[12] The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg said "Unigo is a college resource built for the age of YouTube and Facebook."^[16]

Partnerships

As Unigo's CEO, Goldman hired a team. The site passed one million unique visitors within 8 months of launch.^[17]

As its content grew Unigo provided college reviews for U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings,^[18] published a print college guide with USA Today,^[19] launched college rankings with Money Magazine,^[20] provided all college information for McGraw-Hill,^[21] supplied education stories to ABC News^[22] and partnered with The Wall Street Journal to create a new brand (WSJ On Campus) covering college life. The Wall Street Journal went on to become an investor in Unigo.^[23]

Later, Unigo opened an on-site marketplace with 20,000 paid tutors and college counselors.^[24] Unigo partnered with McGraw-Hill to distribute its counseling services to high school students across the country. After seeing strong sales McGraw-Hill also became an investor in Unigo.^[25]

Growth

Unigo grew to 1.5 million registered users, 14 million unique visitors per year, 650,000 college reviews, 3.3 million scholarships and 100 business and higher education customers.^[26] The InfoCommerce Group provided Unigo its “Model of Excellence” Award celebrating “standout companies that showcase how real revenue is generated by selling and distributing information online.”^[27] Inc Magazine also highlighted “Goldman’s ability to forge smart and lucrative strategic partnerships with big brands."^[28]

Unigo was awarded a $100,000 Gates Foundation grant for its work in the education industry.^[29] Shortly after, Goldman was honored by the White House in an event celebrating the country’s top 100 young entrepreneurs.^[30]

Acquisition

Unigo was acquired by Aequitas Capital, a $1.65 billion asset management firm with a student financing arm originating $300 million in student loans.^[31] Aequitas renamed its education operations The Unigo Group.^[32] Today, The Unigo Group provides products and services reaching more than 50% of all college-bound high school students with 45 employees and offices in New York, Portland and Florida.^[33]

Switchboard

In addition to Unigo Goldman is also the founder of Switchboard, a technology licensing company.

Switchboard provides tools helping businesses connect with prospective customers to increase sales. Switchboard saw quick adoption, growing to nearly $1 million in revenue within 12 months of launch, with customers including News Corp, Macmillan Publishing, Aequitas Financial Services Network, McGraw-Hill, Rosenblatt Securities, EG Equities and Jabil Manufacturing. Switchboard was acquired by Aequitas, a customer and asset management firm.^[34]

Television

Goldman has been a guest on more than 50 episodes of ABC News, NBC News, Fox News and CNN discussing issues related to education and technology.^[35] He has presented ideas to leaders at organizations including the White House, the British Embassy, Harvard Business School, NYU Business School and The Washington Monthly.^[36]

Publications

Goldman was profiled in the Prentice Hall textbook “Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures”^[37] and in the McGraw-Hill title “Upstarts: How Gen Y Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business.”^[38] He is the author of policy papers published by The McGraw-Hill Research Foundation and multiple books published by Penguin Books.^[39]

References