Meritful aims to help make student online presence presentable

Azarias Reda decided to combine two key aspects of his adult life when creating his new start-up, Meritful.

The PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Michigan once worked at LinkedIn and has spent a fair amount of his time in Ann Arbor teaching at local high schools. While teaching he noticed every one of his students produced some sort of online content, usually through social media outlets.

So last spring he began building a start-up that helped students in high school and college create a professional online presence that would make potential employers happy and their parents smile.

“We want to help high school students present themselves better on the web,” Reda says. “That’s our underlying goal.”

The Ypsilanti-based start-up plans to conduct a private launch in mid August at a U-M summer camp and fully open up the site in the fall. Reda and his team of four people plan to focus on students in Michigan in the first year and then move onto a national presence in year two.

“We want Meritful to become the de facto location if you want to learn the merit of high school students,” Reda says.

Source: Azarias Reda, founder of Meritful
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit’s growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.