ANN ARBOR, MI – A group of University of Michigan seniors who developed a popular app that’s sweeping across colleges nationwide have been named to Forbes’ 2025 “30 Under 30″ list.
MeetYourClass is an app designed to help incoming college students connect with one another and find friends or roommates before arriving on campus. It has grown to roughly 450,000 users at over 1,000 colleges and is beginning to partner with colleges as a tool to combat declining enrollment.
Cofounders Blake Mischley, Jonah Liss and Kaleb Schmottlack, all 21, developed the app together when they were sophomores at the University of Michigan in fall 2022, along with cofounder Jon Millar, who has since phased out of the startup.
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Now, the app’s developers are being recognized among the nation’s youngest influential entrepreneurs, artists, celebrities and more. Mischley, Liss and Schmottlack made it onto Forbes’ 30 Under 30 education list, which was released earlier this month.
Mischley, a graduate of Forest Hills Northern High School in Grand Rapids, said it is an honor having their startup gain the national spotlight, and especially being among the youngest on the Forbes list. But mostly, it’s just validation that the trio is on the right path.
“Obviously, we know what we’re doing is – we like to think – great,” said Mischley, who is studying computer science at UM. “But getting that validation from Forbes really motivates us.”
“There’s still a lot of work to be done… Now, it’s like, ‘What’s next?‘”
MeetYourClass works similarly to a dating app, where prospective college students can create profiles for themselves with their photos, hometowns, interests, areas of study and links to their social media accounts.
Then, they can scroll through the profiles of other students who plan to attend the same school, and find people with similar interests. The goal is to help prospective students develop a network of friends, potential roommates and study buddies before they even step foot on campus.
When MLive first featured the creators of the MeetYourClass app in May 2024, the website had already swept across college campuses nationwide, with over 360,000 users at 900 schools.
Since then, the site has added nearly 100,000 new users. It is also expanding to work directly with universities to help drive enrollment by building community among prospective students.
Founder Jonah Liss holds up an example page for a new MeetYourClass profile at Michigan Union in Ann Arbor on Thursday, May 9, 2024.Jacob Hamilton | MLive.com
Mischley said they’re pitching the app to college administrators as a tool to combat what is known in higher education as “summer melt,” which is when a college-bound students commits to a school but never ends up attending college.
“They’ll have applied, they’ve been admitted, and they’ll even (make a) deposit and commit to an institution, but then they just don’t show up on the first day for whatever reason,” he explained.
It’s estimated 10-40% of high school students fall into that category each year, said Liss, who is studying business administration and graduated from International Academy in Bloomfield Hills. But MeetYourClass is hoping to help shrink that number by helping prospective students find a sense of community so they can be confident to go to college.
“Where we’re really trying to help is get students to that finish line to actually be confident enough to show up on the first day, because they have that support system,” Mischley said.
“From a student side, we’re providing them the software that we have for over 400,000 students, that is organic to these newer generations. And then from a university side, we’re giving proprietary technology to help them better serve those students and figure out, how can we get these students to the finish line?”
MeetYourClass has already developed official partnerships with 10 schools across the Midwest, including Michigan Tech, Oakland University, Spring Arbor University and the University of Dayton. The goal is to keep expanding, Mischley said.
“We’re having more conversations with schools across the country,” he said.
While the Forbes list also has a separate social media category, which is mostly for content creators, Liss said he was glad to see MeetYourClass recognized in Forbes’ education category as a tool for higher education.
When the group of UM students first started MeetYourClass, they simply saw it as a social media platform to help prospective college students find new friends and roommates. Now, they view it as a tool that can lead to better educational outcomes and reduce barriers to higher education.
“Over time, it’s evolved from rather than just saying, ‘We want to help people get roommates and socialize easier,’ to now it’s more for the sake of enrollment and making the college experience and the education process easier,” he said.
