{"id":1909259,"date":"2026-04-28T15:33:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1909259"},"modified":"2026-04-28T15:33:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:33:27","slug":"founder-of-shark-tank-backed-startup-scholly-sues-his-acquirer-sallie-mae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1909259","title":{"rendered":"Founder of Shark Tank-backed\u00a0startup\u00a0Scholly sues\u00a0his acquirer\u00a0Sallie Mae"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[analyse_image type=&#8221;featured&#8221; src=&#8221;https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/christopher-gray-scholly.jpg?resize=1200,1024&#8243;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-content wp-block-post-content is-layout-constrained wp-block-post-content-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Chris Gray sold his Shark Tank-backed scholarship search startup Scholly to Sallie Mae in 2023, he thought he had it all. Now he\u2019s suing the student loan giant for wrongful termination and alleging that it\u2019s selling the data his app collected, which includes personal info on minors, without properly informing users.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gray co-founded the company a decade prior with the hope of helping students more easily find college scholarships that were going untapped. Within two years, he nabbed sharks Daymond John and Lori Greiner as investors after an appearance on the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With the acquisition, Gray became one of the few Black venture-backed fintech founders to exit their company, despite receiving some blowback that he was \u201cselling out.\u201d \u201cI think being one of the first Black tech companies to get acquired by a bank, that\u2019s really a big achievement,\u201d he said at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He took a vice president role at Sallie Mae and expected to settle in nicely at his new gig, while helping scale Scholly and making it free to use, he said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What happened next is detailed in Gray\u2019s lawsuit against Sallie Mae in Delaware Superior Court, and in a whistleblower complaint he submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, both of which he filed earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He alleges Sallie Mae laid off his employees, including his co-founders, and then went back on promises that it wouldn\u2019t sell the users\u2019 data, according to a TechCrunch review of both filings. He claims the company fired him a year after the acquisition when he tried to raise concerns about data privacy issues. Gray is seeking backpay and punitive damages in the suit, plus legal costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gray told TechCrunch that before he agreed to the sale, he believed Sallie Mae would be prohibited from disclosing or selling non-public personal information about Scholly customers to third parties because it was a federally regulated financial institution.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-techcrunch-inline-cta\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__flag\">Techcrunch event<\/div>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__content\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__header-container\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__header-container-desktop\">\n<h3 class=\"inline-cta__header has-h-5-font-size\">Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt<\/h3>\n<h4 class=\"inline-cta__subheader\">Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $410.<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__header-container-mobile\">\n<h3 class=\"inline-cta__header has-h-5-font-size\">Meet your next investor or portfolio startup at Disrupt<\/h3>\n<h4 class=\"inline-cta__subheader\">Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $410.<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__event-info\"><span class=\"inline-cta__location\">San Francisco, CA<\/span><span class=\"inline-cta__separator\">|<\/span><span class=\"inline-cta__date\">October 13-15, 2026<\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__register-button\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\">REGISTER NOW<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now he alleges that his acquirer got around any such regulations by putting Scholly into a subsidiary that is selling the data \u2014 including age, gender, race, and other indicators of an individual\u2019s financial need \u2014 to third parties like universities and advertisers, possibly without students\u2019 full awareness.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI sold Scholly to a regulated bank because I believed it would protect the students who trusted us,\u201d Gray told TechCrunch. \u201cInstead, I watched the company build a non-bank subsidiary to do things the bank itself can\u2019t legally do: sell student data. That\u2019s not the company I thought I was joining.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sallie Mae denied Gray\u2019s allegations, calling them \u201cwithout merit\u201d and declined to answer TechCrunch\u2019s questions about its data privacy practices.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhile we don\u2019t comment on pending litigation, it\u2019s unfortunate a former employee is making false accusations about our company following his departure nearly two years ago. We plan to vigorously defend ourselves against these claims which are without merit or substance,\u201d Rick Castellano, the company\u2019s vice president of corporate communications, said in an email.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Asked which specific accusations were \u201cfalse,\u201d Castellano declined to comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-from-alabama-to-shark-tank\"><strong>From Alabama to Shark Tank <\/strong><\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gray grew up low-income in Birmingham, Alabama, with a single mother and two siblings. He felt the barriers to higher education were \u201creal and immediate\u201d for someone like him.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Aside from being expensive, he felt he lacked access to information to help him make proper decisions about where to go and how to afford it, a pressure that only compounded after his mother lost her job in the 2008 recession.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat experience shaped how I thought about the scholarship system later,\u201d he recalled, saying he began to view education and scholarship as \u201ca problem of access rather than a problem of merit.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a teenager, when the time came for him to apply for scholarships, he found the process fragmented and inefficient, he said. There was no centralized search for him to find opportunities, and when he did find a website with scholarship options, there were thousands of listings, but no reliable way to filter to see what he was actually eligible for. Not to mention the scams and outdated listings that persisted on some sites.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, he applied to about 75 scholarships over the course of seven months using public computers and the internet at the library, and won around $1.3 million in scholarship funding, including from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He studied economics and entrepreneurship at Drexel University and met students facing a familiar roadblock. \u201cStudents kept asking for help finding scholarships,\u201d he told TechCrunch. \u201cThe funding existed with hundreds of millions of dollars unclaimed each year, but the search process was broken.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He started mapping out the eight core criteria that determined scholarship eligibility \u2014 age, location, major, GPA, race, gender, field of study, and financial need.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat became the foundation of Scholly\u2019s matching algorithm,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During his senior year, Gray, alongside Nick Pirollo and Bryson Alef, whom he met as Coca-Cola Scholars, officially launched Scholly in 2013. For just $0.99 a month, students could use the platform and filter by eligibility criteria. \u201cThat price kept the business sustainable without having to sell data or run ads,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Scholly switched to a freemium model after Gray pitched the idea on Shark Tank. The sharks clamored over his idea in what became the \u201cworst fight in Shark Tank history,\u201d according to one of the hosts who invested. Scholly grew to 5 million users and made more than $30 million in cumulative revenue, Gray said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In March of 2023, Sallie Mae\u2019s corporate development team reached out to Scholly. The bank had just bought the scholarship organization Nitro College a year prior and was trying to move more into the scholarship and college-planning space. \u201cIt was a natural fit,\u201d Gray said, of why the student loan institution wanted Scholly.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sallie Mae bought Scholly in July 2023, brought Gray and his co-founders on board as employees, and made Gray a vice president of product management.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In addition to promising that it would \u201cmake Scholly free for all students, families, and other users,\u201d Sallie Mae CEO Jon Witter said in 2023 that the acquisition \u201callows us to harness and build on Scholly\u2019s innovative technology to unlock future strategic growth opportunities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-sallie-mae-vs-sallie-nbsp\"><strong>Sallie Mae vs. \u201cSallie\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For Gray, the canary in the coal mine came one year after Scholly\u2019s acquisition. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He alleges in the suit that Sallie Mae laid off the Scholly founding team, including his co-founders, in July 2024. Around this same time, Gray claims he heard Sallie Mae executives discuss plans for selling Scholly user data in meetings.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gray alleges executives told him his position was safe, and that the company was just restructuring. But when he went on to raise further concerns about the possible selling of Scholly data, he claims in his suit he was fired before a scheduled meeting with Witter, the CEO, where he planned to discuss those issues.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After his departure, around December 2024, Sallie Mae launched \u201cSallie.com.\u201d This website describes itself as an \u201ceducation solutions company,\u201d and became home to the Scholly platform. It is separate from the website for Sallie Mae, which is home to the bank that makes student loans.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Sallie.com website says it\u2019s owned by an entity called SLM Education Services, LLC. Gray contends in his lawsuit and whistleblower complaint that Sallie Mae is using SLM Education Services in order to sell the personal data collected by Scholly, since it is not a closely regulated financial services company like the Sallie Mae banking arm.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sallie.com discloses that it sells the following customer data in its privacy policy to third parties: name, phone number, email addresses, age, race, gender, education records, and geolocation data. The third parties it sells this information to, it says, include ad networks, educational institutions, brands, and companies dedicated to reselling consumer data.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sallie Mae also pays Sallie \u201cfor the referrral of student loan customers,\u201d according to the Sallie.com \u201cAbout\u201d page.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gray argues in his complaints that the Sallie.com website may be easily confused with the official Sallie Mae website because of similar layouts and \u201csallie\u201d logos, increasing the risk that students may hand over personal data to what they believe to be a bank.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gray\u2019s suit goes on to allege that Sallie Mae used Scholly user data to create something called Backpack Media in March, which it bills as a \u201cfirst-to-market education media network\u201d that \u201coffers brands efficient, scalable access to highly desirable, hard to reach audiences \u2013 Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and those involved in their purchasing decisions,\u201d according to a Sallie press release.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Castellano declined to comment on Backpack Media\u2019s sources for data.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This would not be the first time a Salle Mae-affiliated company has been accused of deceptive or misleading behavior.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A company called Navient, which split from Sallie Mae in 2014, has faced restitution orders from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Department of Justice, and the Department of Education for overcharges. It was sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and reached a $1.85 billion settlement with 39 attorneys general for over what the attorneys general described as predatory student loans.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gray said he knew of these past legal issues, but that he doesn\u2019t regret the sale of Scholly as it helped make the platform free for every student. In fact, he said if he could, he would make the same decision to sell all over again.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBut I\u2019d\u00a0also\u00a0raise the same concerns again,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause I believe we should live in a system where an executive can speak up and change the course of a company in line with the law and fair business practices.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>[analyse_source url=&#8221;https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/04\/28\/founder-of-shark-tank-backed-startup-scholly-sues-his-acquirer-sallie-mae\/&#8221;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[analyse_image type=&#8221;featured&#8221; src=&#8221;https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/christopher-gray-scholly.jpg?resize=1200,1024&#8243;] When Chris Gray sold his Shark Tank-backed scholarship search startup Scholly to Sallie Mae in 2023, he thought he had it all. Now he\u2019s suing the student loan giant for wrongful termination and alleging that it\u2019s selling the data his app collected, which includes personal info on minors, without properly informing users.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,62],"class_list":["post-1909259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-techcrunch-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1909259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1909259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1909259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1909259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}