EDURain hired Jon Honeycutt as it’s CTO and 5th full time employee.
“We did a pitch competition about three weeks ago… and he was one of the people in the crowd, and he was developing video games,” CEO Bryon Pierson told the 4thEst8. “He’s got like 30 years of development experience… and he brings leadership because he was in the Air Force.”
After nearly 10 years in the U.S. Air Force managing teams building web applications and data security Honeycutt worked as a programmer and supervisor in software development and data security, most recently in video game development.
EDURain is a fin-tech platform providing college-bound students a suite of financial tools, key of which is a mechanism to obtain a bridge loan to put a down payment for off-campus housing before the start of school, when student loans are dispersed. Pierson says off-campus housing is far less expensive than university owned housing. The 4thEst8 reported in June how Pierson conducted a successful ‘proof of concept’ when 10 students used EDURain to get approved for bridge loans for housing to enter college this fall.
Pierson says he’s working with lenders to expand this key feature of his company’s college financial services platform.
EDURain was founded in Nov. 2017, is headquartered in St. Louis, MO, and has five full-time employees. Pierson says he’s raised $92,000 from a variety of sources, including FF&F. EDURain has participated in or been helped by the Skandalaris Center, St. Louis Regional Chamber, Impact Ventures, Balso Foundation, ITEN, Olin School of Business, I-Corps., SLU Research, Spark! and Maryville University.
Note: On 1/2/2021 I received a call from Jon Honeycutt objecting to the use of his publicly displayed LinkedIn profile picture in this story. In an abundance of caution I removed his picture and reviewed the 4thEst8 Corrections Policy.
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On the 4thEst8:
Seven Missouri startups pitch to Silicon Valley investors