As a high school counselor for more than a decade, Jason Booker witnessed the challenges that students face when applying to college — including a lack of resources to guide them through the process, and university systems slow to adopt the technologies necessary to connect effectively with students in the modern era.
Booker’s Seattle-based startup, EdXeno, is working to fill that gap.
EdXeno is developing a mobile app to provide free college advising and resources to students, and give universities a recruiting platform by communicating directly with interested students. It’s currently concept-testing and building partnerships with universities, and working on a minimum viable product.
In seeking to upgrade the college admissions process, EdXeno has a larger goal.
“The vision is to create this equitable landscape where everyone has access to the same information,” Booker said. “Historically, students have been forced to conform to institutional needs, and the adults’ needs. Really, nothing in ed-tech has ever been built around the needs of students. And that’s where we think we’re different.”
Booker has been working on this idea since long before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions in June 2023, but he said the landmark ruling strengthens the need for EdXeno’s approach.
“It is not exactly clear to what extent the ruling will shift the admissions landscape. Most universities were not very transparent about how they used affirmative action in their admissions processes,” he said. “However, the ruling can only make it equally or more difficult for universities to recruit and welcome diverse incoming students. Adopting EdXeno would be one way to utilize technology to mitigate the negative impacts of this ruling.”
Removing politics from the discussion, EdXeno is aiming to give universities a new way to engage with students and learn what makes them the right fit as applicants for their colleges, he said.
“The spirit of the ruling is for universities to focus on criteria other than race, and EdXeno allows universities to collect additional qualitative data by engaging directly with applicants online,” he explained.
From high school counselor to startup founder
Much like the students he aims to serve, Booker’s own journey has taken a series of unexpected twists.
Originally a computer science major at UCLA, he switched to psychology and received his bachelor’s degree in 2007. He realized he enjoyed working with students as a volunteer tutor in the L.A. Unified School District.
After earning a Master of Education degree in counseling from Vanderbilt University, he worked as a high school counselor for 11 years in schools in Nashville and Chicago. He ultimately decided to chart his own path in the field — initially founding a nonprofit called Equitable College Counseling before founding EdXeno.
The startup spirit is part of Booker’s family. His dad, Joe Booker, made headlines as a pioneering business and technology leader — leveraging his experience in the Air Force, IBM, and Memorex to become a notable tech entrepreneur in the 1970s and 1980s, a rare example of a Black founder in Silicon Valley at the time.
“As a founder, we can’t predict the future. … As a CEO, how do you avoid derailing everything that you worked for? I had to learn that on the fly. I learned exactly how resilient I am.”
Jason Booker, EdXeno CEO
“He just showed me, no matter what, I can do it,” Jason Booker said. His dad offers informal advice and input but isn’t involved in EdXeno directly, he said, except “for being my biggest champion.”
His family was also one reason Booker decided to move to Seattle in May of last year. His brother, Joel, was struggling at the time with issues including alcohol and the lingering effects of social isolation from the COVID-19 pandemic. Booker said he foresaw the need to be closer to home to support his family. His brother died in July in an accident at home.
While being sure to take the time to grieve, Booker said he decided to press ahead with the startup.
“I think I learned some additional grit and how to push through,” he said. “As a founder, we can’t predict the future. … As a CEO, how do you avoid derailing everything that you worked for? I had to learn that on the fly. I learned exactly how resilient I am.”
Informed by his background in psychology, he’s also careful to stay in tune with his own well-being. When he feels like he’s pushing his limits, his commitment to himself is that he will stop for the day. He puts a particular emphasis on his physical wellness, with walks, acupuncture, and other activities to help keep his mind in a positive place.
Booker has bootstrapped EdXeno so far, without outside funding. He is considering raising a seed round this year, and has been making connections through groups such as the Washington Black Angel Network and the new Black Founders Group in the Seattle area, which had a strong turnout at its recent formation meeting.
This reflects an unexpected upside from his move to Seattle.
“The networking has just come easier for me here. As a founder in Chicago, I couldn’t figure it out,” he said. “I was able to plug into the Seattle community a lot more seamlessly, a lot easier. I didn’t face the same type of uphill battle. I think it’s that Midwestern resistance to change. I don’t feel that here. So I’m able to be myself, be authentic.”
EdXeno’s platform and business model
As planned by the company, students using the platform will be able to book appointments to meet with EdXeno advisors through text or video chat. The app will offer personalized learning paths, interactive courses, live sessions, peer feedback, and career guidance.
Booker said the approach is designed to complement, not replace, existing school counselors, providing additional resources for students outside of school hours and on their own schedules.
EdXeno’s business model involves signing up universities to use its platform as a recruiting tool. Universities will be able to directly communicate with students through push notifications, live events, and other features. To unlock the full slate of features, universities will need to subscribe to EdXeno as paying customers.
Challenges ahead for EdXeno will include signing up universities, creating a compelling experience for students, and finding its place in a college applications landscape where much of the focus is on the Common App.
EdXeno’s competitors will include existing sites Niche and CollegeVine. The Seattle-area startup Cirkled In, led by entrepreneur Reetu Gupta, also operates in this general area of helping high school students apply to college.
Compared with CollegeVine, for example, Booker said EdXeno’s differentiation will come in part from the fact that it won’t be passing costs for counseling and advanced services on to school districts or students.
Longer term, EdXeno is also looking at the possibility of incorporating artificial intelligence into the process, as well, essentially becoming the ChatGPT of college admissions, as Booker describes it.
EdXeno has four full-time and three part-time employees.
Booker’s experience and insights as a former high school counselor set the startup apart, said Givone Hegwood, a leader of the Seattle Startup Friends community organization, who joined EdXeno last fall as a project manager.
“It was Jason’s domain expertise,” Hegwood said of his decision to join the company, describing EdXeno’s potential to combine that expertise with technology, data, and emerging AI models to make a positive social impact in college recruiting and admissions. “I felt like that would be a great, winning combination.”
