Coursedog

Overview

Coursedog turned a familiar student complaint into a durable enterprise-software wedge. Justin Wenig and Nicholas Diao could not get into the Columbia computer-science classes they wanted, learned that universities still assembled schedules with spreadsheets and SQL reports, and began selling a scheduling layer that sat above the student information system. The company expanded into curriculum, catalogs, events, faculty workload, assessment, and analytics without asking institutions to replace their system of record.

The outcome is better described as a majority recapitalization than a shutdown. Coursedog and JMI Equity announced a $90 million strategic growth investment in March 2023. Wenig later called it a “nine-figure majority sale to JMI Equity.” The parties did not publish the valuation, consideration split, or investor returns.^[1] Coursedog remains active under CEO Andrew Rosen, serves more than 500 campuses and 3.5 million students, and acquired course-evaluation company ClassRanked in April 2026.^[2]

Its trajectory rests on one disciplined choice: modernize the administrative layer without replacing the database beneath it. That reduced institutional risk, shortened the path to adoption, and let one integration support several products. The cost was a services-heavy implementation motion and dependence on incumbent SIS vendors. JMI bought into that trade rather than removing it.

Founding Story

Wenig and Diao met as computer-science students at Columbia. Their classes overlapped, registration was frustrating, and the apparent optimization problem looked tractable. They abandoned planned summer internships, worked from a campus lounge, and began calling registrars. The first product idea did not survive those calls intact.

In Coursedog's 2019 Hacker News launch, Wenig wrote that universities relied on “excel spreadsheets, manual horse/brain/caffeine-power and SQL reports to clean up inevitable errors.” The founders built a Vue and Node application with a mixed-integer programming optimizer, then added manual editing because university priorities could overrule a mathematically neat schedule. Columbia Law School became an early design partner, and Brigham Young University became the first full institutional contract.^[3]

The founders made roughly 1,000 calls, according to a Columbia alumni profile. That work exposed a more useful problem than automatic scheduling alone: every registrar had local rules, political constraints, and several disconnected systems. Coursedog had to preserve human control, integrate with incumbent data, and make the workflow legible to faculty and administrators.^[4]

By June 2019, the 16-person company said it had 55 customers, $5 million of booked contracts, and profitability. Implementation averaged about $100,000, while annual licenses ranged from $15,000 to $100,000. Integration with a standard SIS could take three to five weeks.^[5] The economics showed that schools would pay for operational software when it fit the systems and approval structures they already had.

Timeline

• 2018: Wenig and Diao found Coursedog after researching Columbia's scheduling process.^[2]
• Early 2019: Coursedog joins YC's Winter 2019 batch and raises a $1.25 million seed round.^[5]
• August 2019: The founders report 40 universities and $150,000-plus multi-year contracts in their Hacker News launch.^[3]
• March 2020: Coursedog raises $4.2 million, bringing known funding to $5.7 million, and reports more than 60 institutions.^[6]
• September 2021: Coatue leads a $17 million Series A; Coursedog reports nearly 100 institutional partners and 60 employees.^[7]
• March 2023: JMI Equity and Gregg Scoresby make a $90 million strategic growth investment. Coursedog reports more than 170 customers.^[1]
• June 2024: Andrew Rosen, a Blackboard co-founder and former Interfolio CEO, becomes Coursedog's CEO. Wenig moves into product strategy.^[8]
• By 2025: Wenig is building Starbridge; Coursedog continues adding executives, products, and institutional partners.^[9]
• April 2026: Coursedog acquires ClassRanked and adds course evaluations to its Assessment Cloud.^[10]