A simple idea: meet students on their phones and help them take the next step. 

Then came Pounce at Georgia State University. And with it, the question became more concrete:

Could timely, personalized guidance help students move through the fragile stretch between being admitted and actually enrolling?

That work started with a very specific problem: summer melt. Students had already earned their way in, but there were still forms to complete, deadlines to meet, documents to submit, and steps that could quietly knock them off course.

Together with GSU, we learned something important: when students had a clear next step, delivered at the right moment, more of them made it through.

Then came more moments, more use cases, more students.

And many of you were right there with us, figuring it out in real time. 

What we learned together was pretty simple: timing matters, clarity matters, and small nudges can change outcomes in a big way. 

That idea stuck.

How It Grew

We didn’t set out with a grand plan to expand across the student lifecycle. It’s where the work took us. 

The same challenges kept showing up, not just in admissions, but in onboarding, financial aid, registration, course selection, persistence, and even inside the classroom itself.

So we followed the friction. 

With partners like GSU, Perimeter College, Morgan State, UCF, Cal Poly Pomona, Texas A&M, Ocean County College, University of West Florida, and so many others, we kept asking more specific questions.

Could this help students complete FAFSA? Register earlier? Resolve balances before they become barriers? Find support before a challenge results in a stop-out? Stay engaged in a course? Complete assignments? Earn the grade they were capable of earning?

Over time, the answer kept coming back: yes, this can work.

But just as importantly, we learned that impact does not come from messaging alone. It comes from understanding the moment, the student, the system around them, and the next step that actually matters.

That is what this first decade helped show.

A Bit More Context on This New Chapter

You’ve already seen the news about Mainstay joining the LEMNIS Collective and becoming a nonprofit (and if you want the official version, it’s here). 

I wanted to share a bit more context from where I sit. 

This isn’t a big shift in direction, it’s the pieces coming into alignment.

What We Learned Together

In many ways, the first chapter of this work has been about answering one big question: can timely, conversational support make a measurable difference in students’ lives?

Not in theory. Not as a general idea. But in real institutions, with real students, navigating real systems.

Across enrollment, persistence, financial aid, registration, and academic success, the evidence has become clearer. When support is timely, relevant, and connected to the student’s actual path, it can help students keep moving.

And because we learned that alongside our partners, we also learned something else: every context matters.

A large public research university is not the same as a community college. A first-year student navigating summer enrollment is not the same as a continuing student managing a balance, a registration hold, or a difficult course. A message that helps in one moment may not be the right one in another.

So the next question is not just whether this work can make a difference.

It is how it works best.

What This Unlocks

Over the years, we’ve gotten clearer on what actually drives impact, and what gets in the way. This next chapter gives us more room to act on that.

It means staying focused on what matters most: real outcomes for learners, over time. Not just activity. Not just messages sent. But whether more students enroll, persist, complete, and succeed. 

It means being a more deeply integrated partner in the work itself: understanding the student journey in context, mapping the moments that matter, and learning how timing, tone, student population, institutional setting, staffing models, and systems all shape the outcome.

It means asking better questions.

What works best for a community college student balancing work, family, and school? What changes at a large four-year institution? What support matters most in a gateway course? What helps a student act before a financial hold becomes a withdrawal? What can we learn in one place that might help another, without pretending every campus is the same?

And it means helping turn those lessons into shared knowledge for the field.

In a lot of ways, it just feels like we can do this work more deliberately: discovering what works, mapping it with our partners, and teaching it back in ways that help more institutions support more students well.

What Hasn’t Changed

The core of this is the same: the team, the way we partner, and the belief that this work is about helping real people navigate systems that aren’t always easy.

It is still about showing up at the right moment with the right next step.

It is still about learning alongside partners.

And it is still about the same question we were asking at the beginning: what would change if every student could get the guidance they need, exactly when they need it?

A Personal Note

When we started AdmitHub, we were building a company, but what drove us was solving a real problem for students. 

Everything since then, including Mainstay, the scale, the partnerships, the research, and the lessons learned, has come from following that idea and learning alongside all of you.

This next chapter feels like a continuation of that story, just with more behind it. 

The work ahead is to discover the patterns, map the conditions, and help the field understand how timely, thoughtful support can help more learners move forward.

We’re grateful to be doing that with you.