I am involved (board member) in an exciting startup, a company called Masterstudies.com. We offer potential students a way to find suitable MBA and other Master level programs, and universities and business schools a way to find good students.

So far it has been a fun little project which has involved helping to specify functionality and interface, interacting with the very competent management, and talking to investors.

I think the company has something very useful to offer – there are literally millions of people around the world trying to find their way among the thousands of MBA and other Master level programs in business and related areas. One of the ways we differentiate ourselves from the competition lies in the way universities can specify what kind of leads they want – if you want details, contact our CEO, Linus Murphy.

We have spent the Fall making sure the product is good enough (partially with input from some of my students) and the database large enough (currently at 6,700 different programs) and now is the time to softly launch. There are still bugs to work out, but prospective students can now sign up, fill in their details, select schools and programs based on their preferences. Even though we have not marketed it at all, the traffic figures are promising, the number of leads sent per day is in the hundreds and it is rather exciting to see the details flying by – we are getting leads from all over the world.

I am rather optimistic that this company will succeed in providing value both to universities and students. In the words of our intrepid chairwoman, the student-to-university market is one of the few inefficient markets left, and it is high time someone does something about that. That’s us!

So – why don’t you check it out and tell me what you think?