20 for 20! Let's end the year strong!
Team Letter | November 25, 2024
November 25, 2024
Happy Monday, Alpaca!
Wow – that was an eventful week last week – two in-person events (literally eventful!), plus three new customer sales (yay!), some big brainstorming, some in-person pack deliveries and customer visits, and well, a little bit of office wildlife. There are a lot of things not on our Work for a Start-up bingo cards, and those are the things we’ll someday look back on as the craziest stuff we’ll handle as a team. THANK YOU for being here for the big adventure.
To kick off our LAST 20 working days of 2024, today we’re launching our 20 for 20 Challenge! After last week’s various strategic conversations, I’m pretty excited about the idea of launching some new work in support of having a great, big, awesome 2025.
The challenge is this: Create 20 new pieces of work to launch Alpaca strong in 2025.
The spirit of this is not about chronicling our existing to-do lists or efforts – it’s about thinking a bit differently and trying a new way – of telling our story, supporting our customers, creating our products, or delivering value. What that means for each of you will be different. But imagine this – if all of us achieve it, we’ll have more than 120 new ideas, assets, designs, prototypes, processes, (or customers!!) to launch 2025 strong.
So why are we doing this? I think it’s three things:
Creativity: It can be hard to get out of routines this time of year, when the tendency is to bundle up, hunker down, and try to stay warm. But what we know is that in January, we’ll start talking about a company that looks a lot different than our company looked in January of 2024! We have built some extraordinary things this year, and now, it’s time to show them to the world. This is a great moment to take about 1 hour of your day and allow yourself to create something that doesn’t yet exist in the company. Fun? Yes!
Collaboration: I am amazed by everyone’s productivity and drive to accomplish our own to-do lists and work. But I’m also keenly aware that collaboration makes us all better and that “more minds in the room” is always a good thing. I’m hoping this challenge gives us permission to look up from our own work just a bit to say “hey, want to work on this thing with me? I have no idea where to start.” or “Will you teach me about this? I want to learn it.” I’m also hoping that just sharing these different bits of work will remind us to celebrate each other’s amazing talents. Your work is incredible – we want to see it!
Close Strong: You know what feels amazing in January? Coming back from the holiday READY TO ROLL. If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of setting goals, starting strong, and feeling success against those goals quickly! The new year is going to provide us with a lot of opportunities to talk about our company in some new ways. Let’s be ready for it!
One note: the spirit of this challenge is to create some fun new work that sets us up for success next year – and that’s it! Please don’t stress, and don’t overthink “what counts” or what the rules are. This contest will be self-regulated. :) If you are doing work that you think is super important to next year’s success, and you’re operating with creativity and collaboration for a strong close to the year, “it counts.” Share your work, tell us why it helps us in 2025, and be proud! Here are all of the details of the challenge – let’s GO! See you in the #20-for-20 Slack channel!
♥️
KB
Alpaca 20 for 20 Challenge
Goal: Create, execute, or launch 20 things that support Alpaca’s ability to reach any school or district in 2025. We’re looking for NEW ideas and new work that supports schools and districts big and small, and that moves Alpaca forward in the new year.
Deadline: December 20, 2024
Ideas for projects: (This is not a comprehensive list)
Thought Leadership
Resources published
Social Posts posted (personal or alpaca account)
Videos created
Repeatable/reusable templates for sharing things like product features, quick testimonial quotes, questions/tips for school leaders, and data visualizations.
Event Planning
Outline/plan for a repeatable activation for in-person events that shows off Alpaca’s unique value or engages our customers.
Prototype of new booth demo experience (utilizing more/larger screens?)
Design for new booth swag
Customer Week ideas/ activations/ planning
Data Visualizations
Design (doesn’t even have to be executed with real data, just a design concept) for any data visualization that you think is relevant to our audience and uses Alpaca data.
Wireframe/Outline for a “How are Teachers Doing” report/ news article/ etc
Sales Enablement Materials
New proposal format
New Alpaca Demo
Testimonial (in shareable format)
Case study (in shareable format)
Email cadence/ sequence
Product Samples & Future Improvements
Sample pack/kit sent
90% product designs for packs for 2025
90% product design for "big district sample" pack
Product Features
Pulse features that support larger districts
Design/ documentation for future features
Data visualizations using Pulse data (in shareable format)
Sales Efforts
Sales demo/meeting booked with a qualifying district
5 calls to qualifying district HR or Super teams (regardless if you connect!)
Spring pilot sold to qualifying district (even if it is just for a couple of schools!)
Other projects you choose – get crazy!
How to Publish
Share your submissions on the #20-for-20 channel in Slack, and be sure they’re stored somewhere (Canva project or google drive or something). When you share it, please share:
What you made
Who worked on it
Why it helps us sell to districts of all sizes next year
Imagery if at all possible
Link to where to find it
What you learned (if relevant)
All outtakes and blooper reels :)
Show and Tell: December 20, 2024
On our last day in office, we present all projects created, what we learned, any progress or success. Then we go to lunch and celebrate our year!
Prizes:
Everyone who completes and shares their 20 for 20 will receive a gift card to the restaurant of their choice. There will ALSO be some prizes for honorable mentions, ridiculous ideas, great collaborations, big successes, and creativity.