Alumni Spotlight: Eric Menna (SFS'18) & Sam Bernstein (C'18), Co-Founders of Loper
Interview by Marissa Dai (B’26)
Meet Eric Menna (SFS’18) and Sam Bernstein (C’18), co-founders of Loper - a new app designed to help today’s students discover and match with colleges across the country.
Sam began his career in finance working at a hedge fund, before discovering his passion for education during the pandemic. Eric was inspired through a case he was working on as a consultant with a local school district. Close friends since freshman year, they came together after three years to create Loper in pursuit of providing more innovative and accessible support for high school students in pursuit of postsecondary education.
Tell us a little bit about yourselves:
Eric: SFS class of 2018, originally from Boston, and one of the two founders of Loper. After graduating from Georgetown, I went to work at Bain & Co, a management consultancy, and did a lot of really cool work there across insurance, consumers, technology, and most importantly, education. Sam was one of my closest friends at Georgetown, and it was great to continue the friendship and start this business together after working separately from one another for three years.
Sam: I’m from just outside San Francisco, graduate of the college in 2018, and as Eric mentioned, close friends at Georgetown. We actually lived about three doors down from each other freshman year in Darnall, so the random room assignment ended up working out great. After graduating, I worked for three years at Maverick Capital, a long-short equity hedge fund, before pursuing an area which I am frankly much more passionate about than finance, which is starting this company with Eric.
When did you know that you wanted to become an entrepreneur and how did your experience at Georgetown influence that decision?
Sam: Growing up in the Bay Area, I was always surrounded by that entrepreneurship and tech mania. During college, I worked with StartUp Hoyas, and seeing so many student and alumni entrepreneurs was very inspiring. But I also think what makes Georgetown really special is the passion, not just for ideas to turn into companies, but social causes, their studies, etc. and I think at the heart of entrepreneurship is that passion. Starting something that I felt had a greater impact and real meaning and matter was what I was surrounded by at Georgetown and what I was inspired to do. I didn't know until later that I wanted to start something focused in education, but when I was at Georgetown, I knew that I wanted to work on the ground floor of something that I felt could make a really big difference in the world.
Eric: I come from a family of educators, and education has always been one of the most important things that I’ve grown up valuing in life. I spent a lot of time at Georgetown digging into that specifically as a student in the SFS. I worked for four years in the Mortara Fellows program doing research into the impact and value associated with education internationally. One of the things I really appreciate about Georgetown is this idea of understanding and thinking interdisciplinarily as you are balancing a lot of different stuff, and one thing I would say with absolute certainty about being an entrepreneur is you have to juggle so much at once and multitask across a lot of different concepts and focuses. So for me, the drive to entrepreneurship stemmed first from that passion for education, and then, seeing a need with Sam together about this concept for an app providing postsecondary support for students.
What inspired you to create Loper and what excites you about it?
Sam: The inspiration, on my side, was really influenced by the pandemic. It gave me the chance to step back and think about what I wanted to do if my passion wasn’t in finance. I’ll always remember listening to a podcast with the Impossible Foods founder who talked about his framing in starting that company, which was thinking “What’s the biggest problem facing the world that you can work on solving?” Using that framework during the pandemic, I saw an incredibly bright spotlight shown on inequality, especially in higher education. With all the problems with higher ed, and there are many, it is still the #1 way to increase your earning potential and promote social mobility. That is what inspired me to work on a company and platform that can make education not only more accessible but also help students gain success working through their education.
Eric: One of the last cases I worked on at Bain was with a charter school district in St. Louis. It started as your typical strategy case, and it ended with Covid hitting the district and figuring out how to take 2500 underprivileged kids and give them resources when they’re struggling to find good workable internet in their houses. It really identified for me the fact that there needs to be better resources designed for today’s students and more innovation in education. The vision for Loper is to support high school students in determining where to apply to college based on hundreds of different factors, from cost to academic interest to the type of experience they’re looking for. What we’re trying to create here at Loper is a world where students can easily figure out where they should be enrolling, whether it’s any type of academic program or learning experience, to obtain an outcome that they can continue to progress in for lifelong learning.
Tell us a little more about Loper and how it works:
Eric: We are creating a resource designed for today’s students. Frankly, a lot of the preexisting resources are outdated, so we are designing our platform to really approach today’s teenager and how they want to learn about colleges. We also want to expose high schoolers to the idea that there’s more beyond the traditional 4-year college option. We expand our scope in a way that a lot of companies in our space currently don’t.
Sam: Today, the product looks like a personalized college search app. It’s free for students and counselors, and the interface looks very similar to a dating app, specifically Tinder or Bumble, swiping right and left. We built an algorithm that can break down college preferences across hundreds of different criteria and provides students with the best college matches based on these preferences. This data helps to inform content tailored to each student and personalizes the resources they receive. To give a very basic example, if a student matches with Georgetown, and they’re interested in studying business, they should be seeing information about the MSB and not the SFS. In doing so, we power much stronger college marketing that can bring more transparency to students about their best fit. We are really excited about personalizing students’ college search, and when envisioning the platform moving forward, we want students to be able to explore any option, whether that’s a 2-year college, online/hybrid program, credentials, etc., and evaluate those options side-by-side in order to make the best decision for themself.
Tell us about your favorite and least favorite parts of your experience building Loper:
Sam: My least favorite part of the job is that you have to send a lot of cold outreach. I really enjoy getting to know people, but there’s no way around the fact that cold outreach is cold. On the flip side of that, my favorite part has been meeting really excited and passionate people who care a lot about student outcomes and college access, and they all have a different scope. It’s been really fun to learn so much and champion those needs in the work that we do.
Eric: My least favorite part personally is you have to fly every single level all at the same time because there is no one else but me and Sam. We have to be thinking six months out while also troubleshooting something in today’s moment. I think that’s a double edged sword because that’s also my favorite thing about the company. It can be very exhausting, but it is also incredibly empowering to wake up everyday and look across the table at Sam and say, “What do we think is going to provide the most impact?” There’s just not a lot of circumstances when you’re our age where you get to make those types of decisions, and it’s one of the best things to be able to do it with each other.
What is something you wish more people knew about this field?
Eric: One of the biggest reminders for me in the last 18 months is how unbelievably bubbled a person can be based on their educational experience and the true variety in schooling that exists around the country. The world looks a lot different when you start to go outside of those gates on the Hilltop. That’s something I thought I knew, but I’ve only had more exposure to it today.
Sam: I would say a couple stats I wish more people knew coming off that. There’s around 2500 different 4-year colleges, yet a lot of people think there’s 100, and maybe only 20 or 30 of those actually matter, and that is not true. I also wish that more people knew that the 4-year graduation rate sits around 40%. The national student-to-council ratio is about 475-to-1. 20% of kids don’t have access to a college counselor. 40% of credits are lost when you transfer. I wish more people knew those stats, because I think there is a lot of unrecognized need where education has this tremendous ability to change people’s lives. We are very fortunate as Georgetown grads to have gone to an institution like that but we only enroll something like 1500 to 2000 kids a year, and there’s roughly 4 million seniors in the US, so there is a huge, huge world beyond your 25-50 most selective universities. Education is a necessity in a thriving democracy and furthering education beyond high school is a necessity, with some exceptions, in terms of increasing earning potential. I wish more people knew these stats and that this is such a pressing need.
Eric: The only thing I would add to those numbers is that moving any of those metrics even marginally has such a huge impact. For example, if loss on credit transfers decrease by 5% that adds a massive amount of value to the American student and the potential cost of their education.
What is one piece of advice you would give to current students who might be interested in entrepreneurship or tech?
Sam: Don’t rush to find a passion, and make sure what you find you are really passionate about.There’s an allure to starting a company, but I will not sugarcoat that it is incredibly stressful at times. Eric and I both worked in very high-performing industries and jobs, but this role places completely different demands on you, and if you don’t really care about what you’re working on, you’re just going to burn out and you’re not going to find fulfillment. Regardless of the company’s success, I don’t think you are going to find the same personal success and satisfaction that you might expect. I highly encourage people to do it, I would encourage more Georgetown students to start companies, but make sure when you’re starting it, you really care about it. There’s a lot of issues to tackle, and that’s the fun part of it, everyone’s going to have their own unique direction.
Eric: I totally agree with Sam, and predominantly, the majority of students are not going to have the same passions five years after they graduate as they did when they were students; that’s an important thing to remember. The two pieces that I would add on: one, the Georgetown network truly runs deeper than most. If you see someone from Georgetown that’s doing something that interests you, reach out to them as fast as possible. They would love to talk to you and hear more about what you’re learning. The second piece is asking critical questions in the courses that you’re taking. One of the best things about Georgetown education – it forces kids to think critically about what they’re learning in any given class, and it offers the chance to cross over the things you’re learning from one course to another. Take advantage of the fact that this is probably the best education you are going to get in your entire life which just opens up so many opportunities to dig deep and learn as much as possible.