ECMC Group's Education Impact Fund Picks Three Startups for EIF Catalyst

What EIF Catalyst offers

According to the announcement, EIF Catalyst is designed to support each organization's shift from founder-led sales to a scalable, repeatable go-to-market playbook. It does so by helping founders understand what drives customer demand and build their sales process around it.

The program was developed and is facilitated by Rob Snyder, CEO of Reframe and a fellow at Harvard Innovation Labs. It is built around Snyder's PULL Framework, which moves the focus away from convincing buyers of a product's value and toward understanding what they are already trying to accomplish.

Participants work while they sell. Using their actual pipelines, they learn to identify buyers with an urgent priority, understand why some deals close quickly while others stall, and design a sales approach around those findings.

How the 12 weeks work

The format combines several elements:

• Group sessions
• Sales call reviews
• Individual coaching with Snyder
• Ongoing support from the EIF team

Founders test new approaches with real buyers and refine what works. By the end of the 12 weeks, participants are expected to have a more clearly defined ideal customer profile, a sales process grounded in customer demand, pipeline metrics, and a documented playbook to support future sales hires.

The 2026 cohort

Two of the three companies are named:

• Intellicampus provides an enterprise AI platform purpose-built for higher education. It connects institutional data and governs AI to help colleges and universities improve operations and student support.
• TruLeague combines peer-to-peer student connections with AI-powered insights to help colleges and universities strengthen enrollment, foster belonging, and support confident higher education decisions.

The third company, which connects university research with commercial opportunities, has chosen to remain anonymous for now.

Why ECMC Group is backing sales skills

Joseph Watt, vice president at ECMC Group and managing director of EIF, framed the program as a way to build durable businesses. "Expanding educational opportunity takes more than promising ideas," he said, adding that it takes "sustainable businesses that can bring those ideas to the people and institutions that need them." He said EIF Catalyst helps founders build sales capabilities so they can grow and extend their potential to improve education access and outcomes, particularly for underserved learners.

The Education Impact Fund is described as a $250 million evergreen impact investment fund. It aims to accelerate the transformation of America's postsecondary and workforce ecosystem by investing in innovative companies and collaborating with institutions, employers and communities. ECMC Group is a Minneapolis-headquartered nonprofit corporation focused on helping students succeed.

For early-stage edtech and workforce founders, the program signals that the fund treats sales process, not only product, as a lever for growth. Further details are available at www.educationimpactfund.org/eif-catalyst.