Going after an industry giant in K-12 college and career planning wasn’t what Katie Fang originally had in mind when she started SchooLinks in 2015.

Fang says she “realized the college-readiness market needed a makeover.”

One recent addition is an integration with Common App that allows students using SchooLinks to directly apply to the 900 colleges and universities.

This path has led the Austin-based company to compete head-on against one of the most established players in the business: Naviance.

Fang is aware of what she’s up against in Naviance, which was founded in 2002 and says it is used by over 13 million students across 13,000 schools. Research suggests the tool has had an outsized influence on where students apply to college. Naviance was recently acquired by...

Going after an industry giant in K-12 college and career planning wasn’t what Katie Fang originally had in mind when she started SchooLinks in 2015.

Fang says she “realized the college-readiness market needed a makeover.”

One recent addition is an integration with Common App that allows students using SchooLinks to directly apply to the 900 colleges and universities.

This path has led the Austin-based company to compete head-on against one of the most established players in the business: Naviance.

Fang is aware of what she’s up against in Naviance, which was founded in 2002 and says it is used by over 13 million students across 13,000 schools. Research suggests the tool has had an outsized influence on where students apply to college. Naviance was recently acquired by PowerSchool, which is the most widely used provider of student information systems and other education data services in K-12 schools and districts...