Mike Moradian is an Americaninternet entrepreneur. He is the executive director of HonorSociety.org, a ranking organization that recognizes excellence among students. He is also the founder and CEO of CampusBuddy and CollegeBudget.
Education and early career
Moradian was raised in Westlake Village, California where he attended Westlake High School and studied at the University of California Los Angeles. While at UCLA, Moradian experienced grading discrepancy and wished to increase grading transparency so he began working on an academic social media network. In 2008, after he had graduated from UCLA, he founded CampusBuddy.com. The website published over 100 million anonymized grade records, allowing the public to analyze GPA distributions from many universities in the United States. Mashable praised the Facebook integration feature of the application, writing "where CampusBuddy aces the college social network test is in its integration with Facebook." In 2010, Moradian founded CollegeBudget.com, a student discount site which utilizes collective buying power to negotiate discounts on behalf of its members. The next year, Moradian was accepted to Harvard Business School. He created an online poll and allowed the public to vote on whether he should attend Harvard Business School, or focus on leading his startup. The story was picked up by many media publications including AdWeek, San Francisco Gate and Washington Post. Moradian decided to not to attend HBS, opting to maintain his CEO positions at CollegeBudget and CampusBuddy. In 2012, CollegeBudget acquired the Y Combinator food discount startup Much on Me. Moradian HonorSociety.org as its president and executive director in 2012.
Awards and honors
In 2010 Moradian was named to the Bloomberg Businessweek's America's Best Young Entrepreneurs list. In 2012 Moradian was the youngest executive to be named one of the "Top 40 under 40" by Direct Marketing News Moradian was also showcased in a US Embassy publication entitled "Why Did You Become an Entrepreneur?" and was recognized at the White House as an Empact award recipient recognizing young entrepreneurship.