Founder’s Five: Joel Di Trapani, Vygo

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions.

Joel Di Trapani co-founded Vygo to provide a support ecosystem platform within universities to keep students from falling through the cracks.

Vygo was founded in 2015 by Joel Di Trapani, Ben Hallett, and Steven Hastie after they witnessed too many of their peers falling through the cracks in their university’s support system. Accordingly, they set about to design Vygo. This support ecosystem platform combines all the support services a university offers so that students are only one click away from the person they need. Vygo connects students with tutors, mentors, counselors, advisors, and anyone else they need. Vygo helps students to chat and book 1-on-1 sessions, group sessions, and events, whether online or in person, and tracks data at every point in the journey so universities can understand their support ecosystem for the first time while massively reducing the administrative time needed. Whether students need help improving their English, understanding a complex element of refugee law, fine-tuning their advanced accounting skills, or accessing mental health services, Vygo can provide a solution. 

What is your company’s origin story?

No one in all the generations of my family had ever graduated from school. They hadn’t even gotten past Year 10. Education just wasn’t for them, and I assumed it wasn’t for me. To make that a little bit worse, when I started school, I was diagnosed with learning challenges. And so, I thought, “Oh, I’m just a dumb kid.” And I was fine with it. I just assumed that school wasn’t for me. I didn’t have big aspirations. I thought, “Let’s just get through here and out into the world as quickly as I can.” And that was me.  

But as I was going through school, I had these amazing teachers. I wasn’t a good student, and these teachers would help me, even on weekends, because they saw an opportunity to help a student. At the time, I didn’t understand just how valuable that was. But I had these incredible people surrounding me, and as I reached the end of my schooling, one teacher told me, “You might make it into college if you try.” So, I applied, and I ended up making it through and graduating high school, and then I made it into college.  

And I felt smart and confident and thought, “I’m going to have this amazing life. I’m going to have a college life. This is my world now.” Then, the first assessment came along, and I failed it. And the assessments kept rolling in, and I kept failing. I did not know why; I couldn’t understand. I felt adrift. I’d had these amazing support networks that I hadn’t appreciated in secondary school. But in college, I felt like I had nothing. I kept going and kept failing. And I thought, “I’ll try harder. I’ll come in earlier, I’ll stay later. I’ll sit at the front. I’ll go to the library.” And I just kept failing. I went to a career advisor, who looked at my data and records and advised me to drop out and save the money.  

And just when I was feeling really down, I experienced a fateful intervention. I was sitting on campus one day, and this random guy came up and sat down next to me and asked me what was going on. I spoke to him for an hour, answering his questions. And at the end, he said, “You know, what? The first year is really freaking hard. I failed a couple of subjects, too.” It gives me goosebumps to think about it because it unlocked something for me. I’d felt so alone to that point, and then this guy who was in his last year and seemed awesome and smart told me he had failed too and that I was normal. That conversation gave me the confidence to come back day after day. I went from failing to passing to getting good grades and landing my dream job. More important than that was that I met my wife, business partner, and best friends at college. I transformed my entire life into a path I didn’t think was possible.  

And it’s all because of that one person. Because that one person came up to me when I needed it. They made me feel like I belonged. That experience changed my life. And that’s the whole impetus for Vygo: it only takes one person to change your life forever. We’ve built a platform that tries to give students that one moment. We bring all the services the university offers together so that our students are only one click away from that person who can change their lives. Whether they need a tutor, a counselor, an advisor, an academic, or a career connection, it doesn’t matter. Everyone needs someone different.  

There’s just so much wasted potential when students drop out because they feel alone, lost, or don’t know where to go. But those people and those resources are there for them. All we need to do is help make that connection happen.  

How will the market be changed by your company’s success?

Vygo’s mission is to give everyone in the world access to a world-class education. A world-class education doesn’t mean just smashing them with content; it means giving them the experience they need to have a transformative experience.

Vygo’s mission is to give everyone in the world access to a world-class education. A world-class education doesn’t mean just smashing them with content—it means giving them the experience they need to have a transformative experience.

Joel Di Trapani

 

It means connecting them with the people that they need all around the world. We want to go beyond just the Western countries. We want to help everyone in the world get access to world-class education. That would look like the world that Sal Khan describes in his book, The One World Schoolhouse, where everyone uses technology to give custom and scalable access to affordable or free education to all students worldwide when they need it.