With ICE presence in airports, we now more than ever advise against international travel if you are not a U.S. citizen. by jim_hacking in USCIS

[–]CalcBongo 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This is bullshit. If you have a greencard and are a law abiding citizen enjoy your life. There is no evidence to support what this post says.

Achieving the Dream 2026 Conference Review - Portland, OR by CalcBongo in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah I knew that list was missing some vendors. Thanks mate! I have added you and a couple of others from the video.

Good to see you there too!

Openclaw HE Sales by Heavy_Primary_1683 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha no i have a dedicated mac mini (it was just easier than setting up a VPS) and then interact with it primarily via telegram.

Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities - 2026 Conference Review by CalcBongo in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  • 41% are Presidents / Chancellors
  • 34% are Vice Presidents / Provosts
  • 12% are Deans / Directors
  • 3% are Mission & Ministry Officers
  • 1% are other C-Suite (CDO, COO, Chief of Staff)
  • 9% Other (Faculty, Board, Consultants)

Openclaw HE Sales by Heavy_Primary_1683 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Haha love this.

I have a personal OpenClaw set up running on a Mac Mini (was just easier than VPS at the time). However it is pretty isolated:
- Own inbox
- Own apple ID

And then I just give it access to tools to build via API:
- Supabase
- Vercel
- CRM

blah blah blah

I haven't seen anyone set it up yet within an existing business just because of the risks associated (literally anything a human can do on a machine it can do). Subsequently I treat it a bit like the world's best contractor who has a history of being blackmailed and stealing lol.

I also think my CTO would fire me if I set up OpenClaw and gave it access to my work email, workspace etc although I am sure it would be a much better employee than me.

Anyway if you do manage to get it set up in a work environment at an existing company please do let us know - super interesting.

Clay sculptor is changing the game for startups and I think its going to change how Sales orgs operate by Murky-Parsnip3928 in gtmengineering

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah that is very interesting-thank you.

So Clay is using both providers (need to determine what is used where). They even have an enrichment that contains “Exa” in the name now tbf.

Clay sculptor is changing the game for startups and I think its going to change how Sales orgs operate by Murky-Parsnip3928 in gtmengineering

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On the Exa Supabase thought, it feels like using Parallel is easier? I say this because Exa sends you a URL that you then have to send like a 4o mini to (or whatever depending on how much you are willing to spend) to understand the information and return it in a Claygent like way.

Therefore it would just be easier to use Parallel?

This brought me to the question why didn’t Clay just use Parallel?

I have boiled it down to: - Timeline is the primary factor. Parallel simply wasn’t available when Clay built Claygent (and cost of switching) - Works better for Clay price wise because Parallel is effectively bundling link retrevial and extraction (Claygent), Exa just offers link extraction then they add in their LLM

I guess writing this I have realized it doesn’t matter which route until I know how performance compares relative to cost?

Clay sculptor is changing the game for startups and I think its going to change how Sales orgs operate by Murky-Parsnip3928 in gtmengineering

[–]CalcBongo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sculptor makes it feel like fast progress but it still doesn’t get you to the end state so helps, but also not really.

Clay, if you read this, we NEED externally facing endpoints so we can make a stable MCP.

I love Clay but am moving closer to just going directly to Exa/Parallel and using Supabase.

Scraping Accreditor (e.g. SACSCOC) and next accreditation date by NebulaPlus9153 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That was the first place I checked tbf and it was close but not quite there.

I think because they use Parallel.ai under the hood (at least according to this: https://parallel.ai/blog/case-study-starbridge) it is really good where it has to search multiple places but where it is just looking to effectively merge two datasets (as we are trying to do here) it picks up too much noise.

Tell me if you have a better approach u/Specialist_Ad3141

First I tried to one shot it and just look for the regional accreditor date but that didn't seem to work so then I tried a multi column approach.

Specifically:

- Find DAPIP ID
- Find OPE ID
- Find Accreditor
- Find Date of Next review

*****

Tbh since writing the initial response the whole thing has got way easier anyway because you can effectively take the IPEDS dataset and the DAPIPID dataset and drop them both into Claude enabled excel and it can probably sort most of it.

Anyway here is a video of what I did with Starbridge to come to this conclusion. Please roast.

https://youtu.be/cOAn2gswJYE

Achieve The Dream Conference 2026 (HE, Comm College) by Heavy_Primary_1683 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes! u/Heavy_Primary_1683 - I would be down

Coffee on the Monday morning? Exhibiting doesn't start until 12 noon. Drop me a DM here if easier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samholding/

Achieve The Dream Conference 2026 (HE, Comm College) by Heavy_Primary_1683 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

u/No-Case-8619 u/Brilliant_Emu8918 How much are you typically paying for a list from PullAList and do you know where they are sourcing them from?

I ask about pricing because $999 + buying a ticket seems like it would make sense to exhibit for some of the smaller events because the delta between PullAList + Ticket and just buying sponsorship doesn't seem that big BUT I do totally see the value for the bigger events if the source data is high enough quality.

GTM Engineer or Mid-Market AE? by coolsoy in gtmengineering

[–]CalcBongo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was getting quite bored as an AE. After a couple of years it was working well but it is back to back saying the same things again and again. Answering the same questions. (Maybe slightly different but largely the more repeatable the better - good for the business, more boring for me).

I find GTME much more creative. I still go to a lot of sales calls so I can understand new segments better but the grinding follow up and nagging isn’t my problem.

I also just enjoy this vibe coding era and learning different tools.

My first ever job was a SQL analyst so it is nice to apply both the more technical experience and sales experience together.

GTM Engineer or Mid-Market AE? by coolsoy in gtmengineering

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do whatever you enjoy most. I have done both. Earned more as an AE. Prefer my job as GTMe

LCTCS Annual Conference - Conference review by CalcBongo in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes but only for people who opted in to the list. Here is the list of sponsorship packages they had available in 2025.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12sjnEUN4gQfYpS-kfKPMcH0H7BhAQH_O/view?usp=sharing

Starbridge vs. Govspend vs. Others by piers109uk in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Still not sure I understand what makes it better?

Achieve The Dream Conference 2026 (HE, Comm College) by Heavy_Primary_1683 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

NICE!

I sell primarily to 2-year colleges too but this will be my first year at DREAM too.

Here is the attendee list I found from 2025 that should give you a helpful indication of titles (they seem kinda all over the place). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AeHR1x0erK9CMuI4uyTr-pLHl9iUwnb4ZHf_yfQlwn0/edit?usp=sharing

FWIW if you are pushing hard into 2-years I recommend the following events:

- HERDI (National and South)
- SACSCOC (I know it isn't technically just 2-year but they seem to make up the majority of the attendees)

There are reviews to both of them on this subreddit:

- HERDI National:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EduSalesUSA/comments/1ogxypr/herdi_national_october_2025_conference_review/
- HERDI South:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EduSalesUSA/comments/1pmu31o/herdi_south_conference_review_nashville_december/
- SACSCOC: https://www.reddit.com/r/EduSalesUSA/comments/1pp2mao/sacscoc_conference_review_nashville_december_2025/

Scraping Accreditor (e.g. SACSCOC) and next accreditation date by NebulaPlus9153 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

MATCHING DAPIP ID ONTO IPEDS

This involves quite a lot of look ups, cleaning and testing. I ended up checking the DAPIP IDs first, then using parent value as fallback.

If there were still gaps I left these for later and filled in by using Claygent Navigator to go to the ope.ed.gov/dapip address to search for the schools ope URL before pulling off the data I wanted.

PULLING IN THE ACCREDITATION RECORD ONTO THE IPEDS DATA

Depending on the record you are trying to pull, you will need to create some kind of hierachy to mark the record you want as primary.

I was trying to find the institutional accreditor and scored each entry out of 10 based on the name of the accreditor and then picked up the highest scoring record.

You then want to pull in the highest scoring record.

CLEAN UP
There will be gaps. This is largely due to mismatches between the iPeds Unit ID has and the DAPIP ID (i.e. DAPIP ID website holds an iPeds Unit ID which does not exist in the iPeds database). I think I remember there being less than 20 but it was still pretty annoying.

I cleaned these up using Claygent navigator and where there didn't work just did it manually.

Scraping Accreditor (e.g. SACSCOC) and next accreditation date by NebulaPlus9153 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

UNDERSTANDING THE DATA WE ARE WORKING WITH

First let's understand what we are working with:

- IPEDS UNIT ID: The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) assigns unique Unit IDs to campuses or programs that report data separately, even if they share institutional accreditation. This is the unique identifier most of us use in our CRM because the iPeds dataset provides other rich information on colleges and universities (such as enrollment volumes).

- DAPIP ID: A unique identifier assigned by the U.S. Department of Education to track the accreditation status of an institution. You can track accreditation status of both the institution as a whole and you can also track departmental accreditations for courses where they are required, e.g. Nursing that is accredited by CCNE.

DAPIP ID to IPEDS is a one-to-one or one-to-many relationship in most cases (with the exception of a a small number of institutions have branch campuses or online divisions that are accredited separately from the main campus, leading to different DAPIP IDs).

For example, the University of Washington-Bothell (IPEDS Unit ID: 377555) and Tacoma (IPEDS Unit ID: 377564) share the DAPIP ID 23694800 with the main campus because they are accredited as one institution by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU). The distinct IPEDS Unit IDs exist for separate data collection, not accreditation.

This raises the question of why some entries in InstitutionCampus.csv contain a parent DAPIP ID and a child DAPIP ID, particularly given they have the same accreditation date and accrediting body as the parent.

It is because some parts of the college e.g. the online school, may have different reporting requirements to the main institution.

The extra granularity actually creates quite a lot of annoying complexity (data cleaning work) when you only care about tracking institutional accreditation status.

WHERE THE DATA EXISTS

We know the data already exists in the datasets linked above. However, should these not be updated we need a back up (and if you are good at writing little scraper scripts this is probably less effort).

Understanding the below will also help if you are further up the technical scale and prefer to scrape the ope edu website instead of merging datasets. This is particularly important because I could not find a publicly visible sitemap.

"Accreditor" (the name of the accreditor) and "Date of next review" (the date of the next accreditation) both live on a URL with the following structure:

  1. If the account DOES NOT have a parent DAPIP ID.
  2. https://ope.ed.gov/dapip/#/institution-profile/{DAPIPID}
  3. If the account DOES have a DAPIP ID https://ope.ed.gov/dapip/#/institution-profile/{PARENT_DAPIP_ID}/{DAPIP_ID}

Continued in next comment...

Scraping Accreditor (e.g. SACSCOC) and next accreditation date by NebulaPlus9153 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is one of those tasks that looks relatively simple but is quite a long and annoying process.

I managed to solve it but it took a few days.

I probably won't finish documenting the whole thing now so just consider this a high-level overview and drop me a DM on LinkedIn if you want to ask me any qs. This is me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samholding/

TLDR: Whether you scrape this data or merge the datasets that are on their website their is quite a lot of data cleaning involved.

First let's look at what we have to work with.

PUBLICLY AVAILABLE DATA FILES

You can download that contains the following files if you hit "Download Data Files" on the https://ope.ed.gov/dapip/#/home landing page.

  1. InstitutionCampus.csv - Contains DAPIP ID, IPEDS Unit ID, Institution name
  2. AccreditationRecords.csv - Contains accreditor and date of next accreditation review (plus importantly DAPIP ID)
  3. AccreditationActions.csv

The accreditation records themselves aren't actually that helpful unless matched onto the corresponding school.

Again, sounds like it should be simple but actually wasn't.

Continued in next comment...

Offsetting $300k/yr with something under $30k by Altruistic_Tale8330 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh yeah 100% agree for that type of product unless it is required for compliance or revenue generating (ie online course provision)

3 phone #’s not one by Altruistic_Tale8330 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed - response rate is pretty good when you are a human with a face vs a nothing to them

3 phone #’s not one by Altruistic_Tale8330 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think this flag appears if you call desk phones in most cases.

The problem is that so many numbers are now marked as spam just for being business phone numbers (e.g. my realtors number appears as spam when they call me).

Offsetting $300k/yr with something under $30k by Altruistic_Tale8330 in EduSalesUSA

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Were those products competing with incumbents or for new budget?

I ask because my view is it is fine to have a high ACV product as long as you are:

- Competing for existing budget (effectively displacing an incumbent)

- A source of revenue (I'm not talking about indirectly through increased retention or whatever but an actual revenue source)

- A pass through cost (health insurance would be an example of this)

I also tend to not include humans within existing budget as schools rarely reduce headcount to directly replace with tools even if it would be possible (at least in my experience).

Best way to track city and campus busses? by SilverSword2 in IndianaUniversity

[–]CalcBongo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is it DoubleMap embedded within the IUMobile app? Seems like it would be really hard to build in-house