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AKALA
Techstars '24Beverly Hills, US · Founded 2016 · 17 employees on LinkedIn · 1 known investors
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AKALA provides college admissions guidance combining technology and one-on-one consulting from experienced counselors, making expert-level guidance affordable for a broad student audience. The service targets students seeking personalized support for college applications and admission to competitive universities.
Also known as Akala · goakala
Investors · 1
How we know: the Techstars portfolio · open dataset · Top 3000 Accelerator Startups (no YC) 2026-08 · Not right? Tell us
Company profile
researched Sep 2026AKALA operates a college admissions and career counseling platform that pairs software tools with one-on-one mentoring from professional counselors. The service is designed to support students from as early as 7th grade, covering course selection, extracurricular and work experience, community service, testing recommendations, career exploration, college application and essay guidance, and scholarship discovery. The company describes its approach as a blended model in which technology handles the majority of the admissions process and human counselors provide the remaining personalized guidance, producing an individualized pathway for each student.
The platform includes a free tool called ChanceMe, which compares a student's current profile — classes, extracurriculars, community service, summer experience and test scores — against the applicant pool for a specific college and highlights areas needing improvement. Prospective families enter through a free consultation request or an information form handled by the company's counselors. AKALA states its name stands for "Access, Knowledge, and Achievement Leading to Admission."
The team is led by co-founder and CEO Perry Kalmus, co-founder and Chief Product Officer Barbara Kalmus, and co-founder and President Debon Lewis, alongside a business development manager and a regional head of counseling. The company positions its team as combining education expertise with business and philanthropy backgrounds in order to scale admissions guidance to students regardless of demographics or ability to pay.
Founding story
AKALA grew out of a 25-year legacy college admissions consulting business founded in Princeton, New Jersey. The founders observed that their counseling services, billed at rates as high as $750 per hour, were reachable mainly by affluent families even though nearly all of their students went on to attend top-25 universities, and set out to build a system that could deliver comparable expertise at broader scale and lower cost.
Business model
AKALA sells college admissions and career counseling to families through a blended delivery model: proprietary technology covers the bulk of the admissions workflow while credentialed private college counselors provide one-on-one consulting. Free entry points, including a consultation booking and the ChanceMe assessment tool, feed prospective families to counselors.
Fees paid by families for admissions and career counseling packages delivered through the combined technology and one-on-one counselor model, positioned as substantially cheaper than traditional hourly private college consulting.
Traction
Third-party crowdfunding coverage reports more than $1.1 million in revenue and approximately 300% year-over-year growth. Company marketing cites student outcomes including admissions to Yale, Princeton, Brandeis and USC, along with first-generation scholarships and financial aid packages secured by clients. Employee counts reported publicly range from 11 to 20.
Latest developments
In 2025 AKALA was raising $200,000 through a Wefunder crowdfunding campaign, with an associated SEC Form C filing, offering a $7 million valuation cap on the first $200,000 of investment and a $9 million cap thereafter, with a $250 minimum investment.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography
Market position
AKALA presents itself as a virtual college counselor addressing the access gap in U.S. college admissions counseling, citing backing associated with Google, Global Silicon Valley, Techstars and USC. Third-party listings place it at the pre-seed stage with a small employee base.
AKALA contrasts its pricing and scalability with traditional private college counseling, which it says has been accessible mainly to celebrities, business figures and the wealthy at rates up to $750 per hour. Its stated differentiator is solving roughly 90% of the admissions process with technology and covering the remaining 10% with experienced private counselors, allowing the model to scale beyond an hourly consulting practice.
Technology
The platform is described as AI-enabled, automating a large share of the admissions guidance process; the consumer-facing product includes the ChanceMe tool, which scores a student's profile against the competitive pool for a chosen college. Public technology-stack data associates the company's web properties with Squarespace Commerce, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Ads, reCAPTCHA, Stimulus and related components.
Go-to-market
Direct-to-consumer acquisition via the company website, free consultation scheduling, an information-request form staffed by counselors, and the free ChanceMe tool. Parent and student testimonials and word-of-mouth referrals across New Jersey, New York and California feature prominently in its marketing.
High school students and their parents pursuing admission to selective colleges, including students beginning as early as 7th grade, first-generation college students, and families who could not access traditional high-priced private college counseling. The company cites the roughly 17,000 U.S. high schools that lack a dedicated college counselor as its addressable gap.
Geography
United States. Public listings variously place the company in Los Angeles and Redwood City, California; its counseling roots trace to Princeton, New Jersey, and it names a regional counseling head for the Southeast, with client testimonials from New Jersey, New York and California.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 1
launches, deals, and filingsAKALA launched a crowdfunding raise seeking $200,000 on Wefunder, with a valuation cap of $7 million on the first $200,000 invested and $9 million thereafter, and a $250 minimum investment. An SEC filing accompanies the offering.
$200K source ↗
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- AKALAgoakala.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does AKALA do?
- AKALA is an AI-enabled college admissions and career counseling platform blending software with one-on-one mentoring.
- Who are AKALA's investors?
- AKALA's investors include Techstars.
- Where is AKALA headquartered?
- AKALA is headquartered in Beverly Hills, US.