Plaid Analytics — helping institutions of higher learning to make better decisions
The Plaid Analytics co-founders, Patrick Lougheed and Andrew Drinkwater, recount meeting a global tech company’s VP of technology during their idea development and market research stage. The duo explained their idea and early market validation to which the VP responded with, “Let me play devil’s advocate and tell you all the reasons why your business will crash and burn so that you can see both sides and evaluate accordingly.”
The surprised founders learned quickly that having a good business idea was helpful, but execution would require developers and financing — both of which would be hard because the founders didn’t have an entrepreneurship track record yet at the time.
What emerged from this conversation was a gem of an idea around how the company could begin with consulting and professional services — providing data and analytics solutions to higher education institutions — because of higher education expertise few others had. Once that side of the business is validated, they can build the product they envisioned in the beginning. The name “Plaid” also emerged during this conversation.
How should ’Plaid’ in Plaid Analytics be pronounced? The company’s name Plaid is from the initials of its co-founders, Patrick Lougheed (PL) and Andrew Drinkwater (AD). Adding the letter ‘i’ transforms the combined initials into the word ‘Plaid’, a noun about pattern recognition which integrates well with what Plaid Analytics does. The company president, Andrew Drinkwater chuckles and says, “The irony is that by adding the letter ‘i’ it sometimes confuses people on whether to pronounce our company name as ‘played’ or ‘plaid’.”
Pronounciation aside, what does Plaid Analytics do? Founded in 2016, this company helps universities and colleges interpret, visualize, and take action with their student enrolment management data so they can use that information for analytics, reporting, making better decisions, and forecasting different scenarios.
Andrew says that the idea behind Plaid Analytics was born out of a desire to try and help universities and colleges make more strategic use of data. Andrew’s previous experiences with analytics at SFU and UBC made him realize that “it was a lot harder to change the direction of a big institution on your own,” and that many institutions need to collaborate with independent experts to scale their analytics initiatives, which suggested to him that “there might be a model outside of working for an institution that can help influence how they could use data in an impactful way.”

Andrew and Patrick met while studying and working at SFU. Six years ago, they found that optimizing data was still a relatively new phenomenon for many people in education trying to make better decisions and that there was a lack of knowledge of how to use it successfully. Knowing this, they started a company to help institutions of all sizes make better use of data and improve the student experience. What sets Andrew and Patrick apart is their first-hand knowledge of what really matters in education stemming from substantial technical capabilities and expertise in enrollment planning for universities and colleges.
Shortly after joining VentureLabs, the science and tech accelerator helped Plaid Analytics understand their core target audiences and where they’re located, as well as a clear description of what they do. Working with mentors through VentureLabs helped them understand how to do market research, get financing, and pivot the company towards its next great idea.
Andrew is planning for the future of Plaid by launching a beta version of a product that will help universities and colleges with their enrollment planning. Additional goals include expanding into new markets, growing the Plaid team, focusing on work-life harmony, and giving back to Plaid’s communities.