Unigo.com, not your average New York City boy story

Written on 8th October 2008                                                                                                              0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Every once in a while we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.

This time I’m interviewing Jordan Goldman, founder and CEO of Unigo.com – a student-generated guide to North-American colleges. When I read an article about him in the New York Times magazine a few weeks ago, I was struck by his inspiring story. Jonathan Dee wrote the stunning piece like only a reporter from Eight Avenue can. It’s starts like this:

Born and raised in Staten Island, he graduated from Wesleyan in 2004, spent two post-grad years in England and, upon his return to his native city, lived in 16 different sublets in the next two years. His own parents referred to him as the Wandering Jew. “I was ordering Chinese lunch specials and dividing them into three,” he remembered recently, “and that was my food for days. My mom thought I was nuts. She kept saying, ‘Get a job,’ and I’d say, ‘No, Ma, I have this idea.’ ”

Let’s hear the rest of the story from the Wesleyan graduate himself. It’s kind of long, but I promise, you’ll be entertained.

How did you come up with the idea of Unigo?

“When I was 18, I created a series of 100% student-written college guidebooks, called Students’ Guide to Colleges’, that was published in a couple editions from Penguin Books. About a year after I stopped doing Students’ Guide, I started thinking about the limitations of print guidebooks – each college only got a small number of pages, with no photos, no videos, no interactivity …

For a four-year, $50,000 to $200,000 decision, one of the five most stressful decisions of people’s lives … I realized high school students and parents needed more accurate, authentic, honest information. And college students needed a place where they could really represent their college lives – if they loved their school, if they had issues with it, if they were someplace in-between. The internet provided the opportunity to create an enormous, comprehensive and totally free resource that could help everyone.

But it was really important that we create something that was actually representative. That we didn’t just sit back, open a review platform, and hope people came. (more…)

five questions for start-ups, Jordan Goldman, New York City, New York Times, Penguin Books, Staten Island, Unigo.com, United States

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