For all who dare to go off the beaten track, this is the
inspirational, power-packed playbook for transforming your life and your
world--from a young, Black social entrepreneur whose dorm-room tech
startup has helped millions pay for college and access unprecedented
opportunity.
Gray, the son of a single working mother who had him at age fourteen,
grew up in deep poverty in Birmingham, Alabama. An academic star, he had
every qualification for attending a top college--except for the
financial means. Desperate, Gray headed off the beaten path, searching
online to apply for every scholarship he could find. His hustle resulted
in awards of 1.3 million dollars and became his call to action to help
other students win their own "schollys." It inspired him to start up
Scholly, an app that matches college applicants with millions of dollars
in outside scholarships that often go unclaimed.
When he was a senior at Drexel University, he appeared on Shark Tank
as CEO of Scholly*.* In the most heated fight in the show's history, the
sharks challenged Gray as to whether his app was a charity or a
profitable business. Both, he insisted, proposing a new paradigm for
social entrepreneurship and netting deals from Lori Grenier and Daymond
John.
At the time Scholly's subscriber base was 90,000 users. Today the app
has 4 million subscribers who have won scholarships totaling more than
$100 million. Meanwhile, Gray--without help from the mostly all-white
boy's club of Silicon Valley--has emerged as a tech startup superhero
now tackling the crisis of student debt with innovative, unrivaled
strategies.
Gray's premise is that when you lead with the good--confronting issues
such as poverty and racism--the money will follow. His story is proof
that when you develop a mindset for success, you turn disadvantages into
gold. And when you create opportunities for others, you enrich the
marketplace for yourself too.
Gray shows us, we can carve out new paths to better days and leave
trails for others.
