First-year Northeastern student is expanding his education technology startup
Northeastern became the clear choice for first-year student Troy Gunawardene for a few major reasons — the ability to combine majors, its strong co-op program and its diverse entrepreneurship ecosystem.
The most successful entrepreneurs aren’t afraid of disruption — they thrive on it.
Troy Gunawardene, a Northeastern University first-year computer science and business administration student, has embraced that mantra head-on as co-founder of the education technology startup GradeScout.
As a junior in high school, recognizing insufficiencies with the outdated grade portals provided to students, Gunawardene started the company with his friends to give students an easier and more visually appealing way to access and understand their grades online with additional features including a GPA calculator and grade update notifications.
The service has grown in the years since and today boasts over 12,000 monthly users, according to Gunawardene. Going into college, Gunawardene wanted to build GradeScout and expand the company’s reach.
Northeastern became the clear choice for the New Jersey native for a few major reasons — the ability to combine majors, its strong co-op program and, most importantly, its diverse entrepreneurship ecosystem, he says.
“It started as a high school passion project,” he says. “After coming here, I started taking advantage of every opportunity I could to push it further and make it into a real startup.”
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One of the first things Gunawardene did was join the Entrepreneur’s Club and participate in its Husky Startup Challenge, where he learned to refine his pitch for GradeScout to potential investors. During the final showcase event, students pitch their startups to faculty, Northeastern graduates and others from outside the university. Gunawardene won second place and a social media award at the event.
While in the program, Gunawardene caught the attention of graduate and entrepreneur Tom Stanford, who in June will launch FuzionX, a new co-build company that supports early-stage technology startups. GradeScout will be one of five companies in the initial cohort Stanford will be working with as the company launches.
“I was very impressed with him at first as a founder — his knowledge of the domain, his ability to speak to the value proposition,” Stanford says. “As I learn more about the business, I believe there is a significant amount of headroom for it to grow and evolve as a real enterprise ed-tech solution.”
In just a few short months, Gunawardene has also risen up the ranks at the Entrepreneur’s Club and today serves as the director of software development. He is also the director of partnerships at Rev, a new Northeastern student organization built off of Northeastern’s Mosaic entrepreneurship alliance.
He continues to pitch GradeScout as well. This semester he has participated in the Boston Accelerator Showcase and in Yard Sale @ Northeastern, a pitch/networking event. He just recently received a grant from the Mosaic Prototype Fund for GradeScout.
Gunawardene says he feels fortunate to have come to Northeastern with a plan to build out his startup.
“Having numbers to back up the usage and credibility of GradeScout definitely opens a lot of doors,” he says.
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