What if the most valuable part of university wasn’t just the degree — but the people you should’ve met along the way?

In this episode of Discover Startups, Georgie Brown speaks with Jerry Chen, co-founder of Latte, an EdTech startup helping universities connect students and alumni through smarter mentoring and AI-powered introductions.

Mentoring programs are meant to unlock the real value of higher education — networks, advice and career guidance. But behind the scenes, most universities still run these programs manually or through clunky internal platforms that students and alumni rarely use.

The result?

Students struggle to access alumni networks, staff burn out trying to manage programs, and alumni engagement stays low.

Jerry experienced this problem first-hand as an international student at NYU Stern, where he felt huge pressure to maximise the ROI of an expensive degree. After struggling with ineffective mentoring programs himself, he set out to build a better solution.

Today, Latte helps universities automate mentoring programs and create meaningful student-alumni connections without forcing users onto yet another platform.

The product now has two key components:

• Latte Mentorship — automates mentor matching, introductions and follow-ups for university mentoring programs.
• Latte Connect — an AI-powered system that introduces students and alumni through email or text, while simultaneously updating and enriching alumni data for universities.

Instead of surveys and cold outreach, Latte creates conversational introductions that make mentoring easier, more human and far more scalable.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why mentoring programs in higher education often fail

• The hidden admin burden on career services teams

• Why internal “LinkedIn-style” alumni platforms don’t work

• How Latte automates mentor matching and introductions

• The importance of belonging in the university experience

• Why conversational engagement beats surveys for alumni data

• Founder lessons from building an edtech startup

• Startup shout-out: Synaptrix Labs

If you work in higher education, alumni relations, career services, mentoring programs or edtech, this episode offers a fascinating look at how AI can strengthen human connection rather than replace it.

Key Takeaways:

• Mentoring is powerful — but difficult for universities to scale manually.

• Internal networking platforms struggle because students and alumni prefer tools they already use.

• Strong alumni relationships improve both career outcomes and student belonging.

• Latte automates matching, introductions and follow-ups for mentoring programs.

• AI can enable better conversations rather than just collect survey data.

• The best B2B EdTech products serve both administrators and students.

Chapters:

00:00 — Meet Jerry Chen & Latte

02:33 — The mentoring problem in higher education

06:36 — Why alumni networking tools fall short

08:49 — Belonging and the real ROI of university

09:52 — How Latte Mentorship works

13:09 — Introducing Latte Connect

16:06 — Why conversational engagement beats surveys

24:06 — Early results from mentoring programs

29:29 — Founder lessons from building Latte

35:07 — Startup shout-out: Synaptrix Labs

Links:

Latte — Website

Jerry Chen — LinkedIn