MascotGO Blog: Building an AI-Powered Social Economy

Recently, MascotGO founders presented at the AI/Tech Investing Forum in San Francisco. Here is the keynote: 

Artificial intelligence is no longer on the fringe of innovation. It is the central force driving modern digital transformation. Helen Thomas opened her keynote at the 2025 AI Tech Investing Forum by tracing the history of AI, from its early roots in the 1950s to the statistical modeling era of the 1980s, to the current era fueled by deep learning and generative AI. Yet, she emphasized that AI’s most transformative impact lies ahead, through AI-native infrastructures that reshape how we interact with the web and data.

The AI native tech stack reimagines the internet as a space of intelligent, conversational interfaces. Websites are no longer static; they are being re-architected using protocols like MCP (Model Context Protocol) and agent-to-agent collaboration. MCP enables AI to securely fetch context and perform actions, while the agent-to-agent protocol allows multiple AI systems to collaborate and complete complex workflows in real-time. Microsoft’s NLWeb initiative and Google’s agent-to-agent protocol are leading this transformation, turning traditional websites into intelligent, responsive digital agents.

MascotGO is built on this foundation. As a platform designed to serve over 17 million high school students and millions more in higher education, it leverages multimodal data captured from user interactions across devices to build rich, holistic profiles. These profiles are then matched with over 6,000 postsecondary institutions, creating a two-sided marketplace powered by AI agents that personalize the discovery and matchmaking process.

Founder Market Fit

Building a company at the intersection of AI and education requires more than technical know-how. It demands lived experience, industry insight, and a clear understanding of user pain points. Helen Thomas shared her journey—from earning an MBA at UC Berkeley to building and leading edtech ventures like LeapFrog, Livescribe, and Touchjet. Her pivot to AI stemmed from her leadership at Dark Matter Artificial Intelligence (DMAI), where she immersed herself in the technical foundations of artificial intelligence.

Co-founder Peter Avritch brought complementary strengths. With experience launching two e-commerce platforms and expertise in both hardware and software, Peter understood how to scale and operationalize tech. Together, they embodied founder-market fit: mission-driven, technically fluent, and strategically positioned to drive the AI transformation of the education sector.

Helen emphasized that successful AI implementation requires more than smart algorithms. It requires productization—the ability to translate AI capabilities into usable, impactful tools for real people. Her early launch of an AI tutor for toddlers in 2020, years before ChatGPT mainstreamed generative AI, proved her ability to foresee trends and act decisively.

The Problem to Solve

The college admissions process in the United States is a high-stakes, high-stress journey affecting millions of families. On the student side, high schoolers face information overload and uncertainty. On the institutional side, colleges spend billions on recruitment while struggling with yield rates, retention, and alumni engagement. The stakes are economic, emotional, and systemic.

Helen pointed out that families spend $3 billion annually on independent college counselors, and schools match that with their own recruitment budgets. Yet, much of this money is spent inefficiently due to poor matchmaking and fragmented communication between stakeholders. The result is a disconnect: students are unsure of their fit, and institutions are unable to predict who will actually enroll or succeed.

MascotGO tackles this through AI-powered personalization. By capturing students’ activities—not just their grades, but their real-world interactions, interests, and aspirations—the platform builds dynamic personas. These personas fuel a new kind of engagement with colleges, one that is data-rich, real-time, and built for action.

MascotGO AI Concierge Demo

To demonstrate what this future looks like, Helen showcased a live demo of the MascotGO platform. Through the eyes of Lily, a high school junior, the audience saw how students can discover schools, explore majors, find scholarships, and track their interests with seamless guidance from an AI concierge.

The platform personalizes Lily’s experience from the moment she logs in. Whether she’s interested in basketball, food, or mental health resources, she sees content and recommendations aligned with her life. She builds a profile by journaling, connecting with advisors, and sharing with community groups called “slates.” Her activity feeds a learning loop that sharpens her persona and improves matchmaking.

When Lily uses the “GO” button, the AI doesn’t wait for a prompt. It anticipates her questions and proactively compares universities like ASU and USC based on her interests in psychology and medical school pathways. It saves her research, updates her watch list, and shares insights with her parents and advisors.

This is not just AI chat; it is context-aware, agent-based collaboration that feels intuitive and human. It reflects how the internet itself is evolving: from information retrieval to decision-making support.

Trillion-Dollar Social Economy

In her closing, Helen framed MascotGO as a gateway to a trillion-dollar opportunity: the higher education social economy. Today, 17 million high school students and families engage with the education system. About 62% enroll in college, while 38% enter the workforce. But many of those who skip college later return for vocational training or certificates.

This creates a lifelong journey of discovery, learning, and reinvention. Every step—from high school to college to employment—is a data event. MascotGO aims to own that journey by serving students, families, counselors, and schools with personalized, AI-native tools that lower acquisition costs and boost lifetime value.

Data becomes the moat. Engagement becomes the currency. And AI becomes the engine.

Helen left the audience with a vision: not just of a smarter admissions process, but of a reimagined social economy. One where data flows freely but securely, where every student has an advocate, and where institutions thrive by understanding and serving individuals, not just segments.