New Haven Independent

Higher One Users Group (HUG) is an Internet technology-based financial services company that grew out of the business dreams of three Yale undergrads in 2000 (click here to read an Independent profile of the company). The company has so flourished at its office at Science Park that it has recently been selected by Inc. Magazine as one of the country’s fastest growing companies.

The company provides electronic financial services to colleges, handling loan, tuition, and refunds from universities to students, streamlining the process by eliminating the need for schools to manually cut checks, or for the students to wait in line to receive them.

In January of this year, HUG had 66 clients. In January of 2008 they expect to have about 100. They project the 110-employee force will grow to 130 during the same period, and many of those are filled by people from inner city New Haven, in the area around Science Park.

Mayor John DeStefano came to the Omni Hotel Thursday morning to congratulate them on how far they’ve come.

So what was hizzoner doing in the hallway, shortly before his remarks, displaying, with not-often-seen-before mayoral hand jive, an aeronautical acumen showing how a jet lands at the Tweed-New Haven Airport?

Might it have something to do with the fact that he had recently appointed Mark Volchek (to his right), HUG’s chief financial officer, to serve as the new chairman of the board of the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority to replace Larry Denardis?

“Over the years,” said the mayor, “I learned that it’s wise to appoint the people who complain the most.”

It was not that he, Volchek, personally had complained about the limited services at Tweed, Volchek said, but at this, the third annual conference at which Higher One brings their far-flung clients to New Haven, only a handful of the 50 or so bursars and college financial officers from as far away as Florida, Missouri, and Oregon, could fly directly to New Haven.

Was continued growth of this New Haven success story dependent on improving service at Tweed? That wasn’t the discussion at the essentially educational get-together of HUG clients.

In brief remarks, the mayor described New Haven as an old city that is also a great place for the newest technologies. “Yale is our oldest and largest employer,” he said, “and I think it’s great that Higher One was developed there by its students.”

The mayor also noted that the university’s endowment, he had just read, increased by a whopping 28 percent.

To a reporter, however, Mark Volchek was clearly thinking about how a business based on the newest technology, might well be hampered by old technology, that is, an airport with limited routes emanating from it. “Most of these people sitting around the table flew into LaGuardia or to Kennedy,” said Volchek, “and it would be a lot easier if they could come directly here. This is really one way the political sector can help the business sector,” and he said he had already taken off, no pun intended, on meetings with state Department of Transportation officials, the Elm City alders, officials in East Haven and elsewhere to move along the building of the airport’s new federally funded runway safety areas (RSAs).

“When the RSAs are finished - within three years,” Volchek estimated, “I think two or three carriers will, on the next day, sign up to begin new routes in New Haven.”

Sean Glass (also pictured with the mayor), the company’s chief of marketing, said that HUG’s sales staff travels frequently, and they almost always have to go to Hartford. “Tweed should become more like Westchester, like the White Plains Airport.”

But Glass and HUG love New Haven and have no intention of leaving it. “I was a sophomore when we started the business - Mark, Miles (Miles Lasater, shown here with the mayor) and I started the Yale Entrepreneurial Society and this business grew out of it. “New Haven is a great place for young people and we are young people in a young business.”

These clients were certainly pleased with the young entrepreneurs of Higher One. Carol Wright and George Cubberly, financial officers from Mannatee Community College in Bredenton, Florida, said HUG’s service is excellent. Before signing up with HUG, they used to manually cut checks and mail them, time-consuming work arising out of $2.2 million in financial aid to the college’s 9,000 students, or about 4,000 transactions per year. Now, no cut checks, no envelopes or postage. All student refunds are electronically deposited in student accounts, which students access through their HUG-provided debit/credit cards; no waiting on line. And to make it even sweeter HUG threw in an ATM on each of Mannatee’s three campuses. “The service is excellent, and the president of the college wanted an ATM on all our campuses, and so we pleased him too.”

The young HUG executives take particular pleasure in the substantial jobs they have created in New Haven, many leading to genuine career paths. Glass said that they frequently survey their employees about their satisfaction, and are always on the lookout to move people up; about five employees from the Monterey Place area who started out in the call center at hourly wages, he said, are now salaried and moving up toward management. “Our future growth,” said Glass, “is going to be based in part on serving our clients and also developing new electronic/computer products that will enable students to electronically pay their colleges or universities. I mean there are about 4,000 colleges and universities in the country, and we have as clients 84 of them. We’re going to keep growing.”

None of that growth, it appears, at this point, is threatened by the current state of the airport. But Volchek, who loves airplanes, and likes to get things done, intends to have more and more HUG clients flying directly to New Haven next year, and in the years to come.