Starfish Retention Solutions

Starfish Retention Solutions

Provider of enterprise student success systems.

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Starfish Retention Solutions was established in 2007 by David Yaskin, a former executive at Blackboard. Yaskin's motivation for founding the company stemmed from his belief that higher education technology firms were not adequately addressing the challenge of student completion. The company's first product, Starfish Office Hours, launched in 2008 as a web-based tool to facilitate contact between students and instructors. A significant milestone occurred in February 2015 when the company was acquired by Hobsons, a provider of admissions and advising tools. As part of this acquisition, Yaskin assumed a leadership role within Hobsons. The journey continued in February 2021, when Hobsons' Starfish business line was acquired by EAB for approximately $90 million, combining two of the largest student success solution providers.

Starfish operates in the higher education technology market, serving nearly 250 colleges and universities prior to its first acquisition and expanding to over 500 institutions more recently. The company's business model is centered on providing a subscription-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to these educational institutions. This platform is designed to improve student retention and graduation rates by identifying at-risk students and connecting them with necessary support services. The system generates revenue by licensing its suite of tools to colleges and universities, which use them to manage and scale their student success and advising programs.

The core offering is the Starfish Enterprise Success Platform, a suite of software modules designed to manage student success from enrollment through graduation. The platform's features include early alert systems to identify struggling students in real time, appointment scheduling, and communication tools to connect students with advisors, tutors, and counselors. Key components have included Starfish EARLY ALERT™, Starfish CONNECT™, Starfish ADVISING™, and Starfish INSIGHT™. The platform integrates with existing campus systems like Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Student Information Systems (SIS) to create a holistic view of each student. It allows faculty and staff to raise flags for concerns, give kudos for good performance, and make referrals to campus services, all tracked within a central system. The platform also provides analytics to help institutions measure the effectiveness of their support initiatives.

Keywords: student retention, higher education technology, academic advising, student success platform, early alert system, edtech, David Yaskin, Hobsons, EAB, student support services, degree planning, student engagement, case management, analytics, graduation rates, college retention, academic intervention, learning analytics, student lifecycle management, enterprise software

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