Melvin Hines was one of only 68 people in his high school class of 250 to graduate. In Hines’ hometown in rural southern Georgia, not many students went to college, either. So, he decided he wanted to level the playing field.
In 2013, Hines and his co-founder Alex Pritchett launched Upswing to give under-served students the resources to succeed. Eleven years later, Upswing has extended its support to over 800,000 students nationwide.
Durham-based Upswing is an edtech platform that partners with colleges and universities to help improve graduation rates. The product connects students to academic support services, mental health services, advisors and more, with the help of an AI chatbot named Ana.
Upswing’s target audience is nontraditional students, such as adult learners, online learners or first-generation college students. Nontraditional students make up the majority of college students in the United States.
“These students are the marginalized students that don’t get a lot of attention,” Hines said. “They’re not the ones that people are usually excited to write about or talk about. And, as a result, when new advances happen, for the most part they tend to be left behind.”
Hines said a lot of other edtech products on the market are focused on a singular service, while Upswing is a “one-stop shop” for students. Ana, the virtual assistant, is available 24/7 to direct students to the resource that best suits their needs. Ana has a new interaction with a student every three seconds, Hines said.
All of Ana’s resources, such as helping to set up advising appointments or tutoring sessions, are paid for by the academic institution and are free to students. Based on the number of students at the college or university, Upswing will recommend a certain amount of coaching and mental health sessions the university should purchase upfront.
For each college or university that partners with Upswing, all of their students will receive an automated message from Ana: “Hi, I’m here to make sure you graduate on time.” Ana then lists the different ways Upswing can assist students, and will continue to reach out to students at certain points throughout the academic year: midterms, finals, etc. At any point if a student reaches out with a problem, Ana will connect them with the right campus resource to help them.
Proven positive results
According to a study by Rice University, for every interaction that happens on Upswing’s platform, the student’s GPA increases by .04.
“If you can get them to come in five times in a semester, that GPA will basically be about .2 higher on average than those who don’t come in,” Hines said.
Upswing has partnered with several local colleges, including Raleigh’s Shaw University, Durham Technical Community College and North Carolina Central University in Durham.
Across the colleges and universities that Upswing works with, about 20-25% of their students engage with Upswing’s platform. After partnering with Upswing for just one semester, Hines said Winston-Salem State University saw increases in their students’ writing and math grades.
When Upswing’s co-founders started the company in the Triangle in 2013, they found it hard to secure funding and they moved to Texas to participate in an accelerator program. After the pandemic, Hines and Pritchett moved back to the Triangle—which Hines said now has a lot more resources for startups—and the business partners connected with the Triangle Tweener Fund. The Tweener Fund invested in Upswing in Q1.
Hines believe that was the last round of funding that Upswing will take or need, because he anticipates that the startup will reach positive cash flow by next year.
