The quiet operating system for school choice - turning state education laws into working software for families.
Odyssey's hexagon logo, as filed with its 2024 Series A announcement. The New York company builds the platform states use to administer education savings accounts.
When a state legislature passes a school-choice law, the headlines land on the politics. The harder problem shows up the next morning: someone has to build the digital wallet, verify that a family qualifies, cut the check to a tutor, vet the vendors, and produce an audit trail a state comptroller can defend. Odyssey is the company that does that work.
Founded in 2021 and based in New York's Hudson Square, Odyssey describes itself as the first technology platform built exclusively to administer education savings accounts (ESAs) and microgrant programs. Unlike traditional vouchers - which typically send tuition straight to a private school - ESAs give families a state-funded account they can spend across approved categories: tuition, tutoring, curriculum, technology, and enrichment. That flexibility is the point, and it is also what makes the programs hard to run. Odyssey's platform stitches together the three parties who rarely speak the same language: states that fund the programs, vendors who provide the services, and parents who spend the money.
The company's founder and CEO, Joseph Connor, did not arrive from a payments startup. He started as a classroom teacher in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and San Jose, then went to law school and worked on school-choice policy and litigation, including the landmark case Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. That background shapes the pitch: Odyssey treats a government application not as a form to endure but as a checkout flow to optimize - because a confusing application means eligible families never enroll.
We really believe strongly that the best way to empower parents is through these types of programs, and so we want to make sure that they're accessible to everyone.
The core bottleneck in these programs is verification. Confirming that a child is eligible has traditionally taken weeks - Connor cites a typical 30-to-60-day timeline - as agencies cross-check records by hand. Odyssey says it built the first real-time identity verification for these programs, determining eligibility in under one second. Speed is not a cosmetic feature here; a family that gives up during a month-long wait is a family that never accesses the funding it was entitled to.
From there, the platform runs the whole loop: educating parents on what they qualify for, managing applications, disbursing funds into wallets, letting schools accept tuition, operating a state-regulated marketplace of vetted vendors, processing payments, and handing states the audit and analytics they need to answer to taxpayers.
End-to-end administration: parent education, eligibility, applications, disbursement, and reporting for state programs.
Eligibility determinations in under a second - the company's answer to the traditional 30-60 day wait.
A digital-wallet marketplace where families spend approved funds on tuition, tutoring, curriculum and technology.
Routes state-approved dollars to schools and vendors with transaction-level tracking.
Reporting tools that give state agencies visibility into spending and program outcomes.
States pay per student, plus transaction and processing fees. Parents and vendors use it through the program.
Odyssey's paying customer is the government. State agencies contract the company to run their programs; parents and vendors are the end users who never see a subscription bill. That B2B2C shape is deliberate - selling to the entity that writes the rules is how a company of ~71 people ends up moving hundreds of millions in public money.
The company reports helping 140,000+ students access $400M+ in state education funding, with programs administered or supported across Iowa, Idaho, Missouri, Georgia, Louisiana, Utah, Wyoming, and - as of 2025 - Texas. Its position sits at the intersection of three markets that rarely overlap: govtech, edtech, and fintech.
Contracts with state agencies to run public programs and stay audit-ready.
Serves K-12 families and an education-vendor network.
Digital wallets, disbursement, and payment processing at the core.
Odyssey's claim is focus. Where general-purpose fund-administration tools - competitors include the likes of ClassWallet, Merit, and Student First Technologies - adapt existing systems to ESA rules, Odyssey says it designed its stack specifically for education savings accounts and microgrants from the start. The proof points it leans on are throughput and speed: in Idaho's Empowering Parents program, it processed more than 42,500 applications from 19,000 parents within 30 days of launch, and it markets sub-second eligibility as a category difference rather than an incremental one.
That focus cuts both ways. Administering public money invites scrutiny - Odyssey's contracts and fees have drawn audits and press coverage as it has expanded, particularly around its larger state deals. Building in the public square means the accountability is part of the product surface, not a footnote.
Joseph Connor launches Odyssey to build technology for administering ESAs and microgrants.
Administers Idaho's $50M grant program, processing 42,500+ applications in the first 30 days.
a16z's American Dynamism practice leads, with Village Global, Bling Capital and Avalanche VC.
Named administrator for Iowa's new Students First education savings account program.
Tusk Venture Partners leads a round to expand school-choice technology nationwide.
The Texas Comptroller selects Odyssey to administer the state's new ESA program tied to a ~$1B allocation.
Odyssey reported roughly 3x revenue growth year-over-year around its 2024 raise, on an estimated annual revenue near $2.6M. Through Village Global, early backing traces indirectly to limited partners including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell.
Former urban charter-school teacher turned school-choice attorney. Notre Dame Law (J.D. '16); worked on Espinoza v. Montana before founding Odyssey in 2021.