Alpaca 2 Years Later: What's the Same? What's Changed? What's New?
Team Letter | September 29, 2024
September 29, 2024
Hello, Alpaca Team!!
Welcome to the very last day of the month AND the quarter — it’s time to run this AWESOME quarter into the finish line, with more than 40 new customers coming to us from around the country (and around the world!). In many ways, Q3 feels distinct in my mind. With the launch of Pulse and so many new customers in so many new places, it feels like we’ve started a new chapter as a company.
That new chapter looks like software, it looks like national expansion, it looks like new partnerships, it looks like a new conversation. But it also looks “not new” in some places. It looks like “making it easy to support teachers.” It looks like "Listen to teachers. Tell Stories. Write Thank you Notes. Elevate Every Educator. Bring out the Best.”
So it made me think:
If you think back to two years ago, what do you know about what has stayed the same? What has changed? And what is brand new?
This week and next week, Alpaca has the opportunity to tell our story to some new audiences and new potential investors. So I’ve thought a lot about how our story has changed over time. I took a few moments this weekend to re-read the posts and letters from our early days, from 2022 and even early 2023, and then reflect back on what’s stayed the same, what’s changed, and what’s brand new. It was helpful learning for me, and I thought you might enjoy the essay too. Here it is in its entirety! I hope you enjoy, and if you have stuff to add to the “Same/ Changed/ New” list, I hope you’ll let me know!
Oh: And if you need a fun exercise for your OWN growth this week, please consider trying this out! Here’s exactly what I did:
SAME/ CHANGED/ NEW: A Reflection Exercise
Look back on social posts/ writing/ journals from 2 years ago. Notice what you talked about, what you were passionate about, what you promised and expected of the world around you. Think, too, about what’s NOT in the public-facing posts and writing. What didn’t you say at that time?
Make a list of “what is the same?” “what has changed?”and “What’s brand new?” Do this fast — don’t overthink it!
Spend a bit of time writing or thinking about those answers. What surprises you? Why do you think these things are on the list they’re on?
BONUS: What are you hoping will be on these lists, two years from today?
Beware: this could just be the jumping off point of your new years resolutions! I’m saying it! It’s almost time!
Here’s my essay on the topic. I hope you enjoy!
All In, Alpaca!
KB
Alpaca 2 Years Later: What’s the Same, What Changed, What’s New
Two years ago, I cheerfully celebrated my love of school supplies, thank you notes, and teachers in a LinkedIn post announcing the launch of Alpaca at the beginning of our first full school year. I had no idea what we were in for. :)
Last week, I looked back at the post to ask “What is the same? What’s different? And what’s new?” about now vs. our start.
Tl;dr: here’s the list:
What is the same:
Our mission: to make it easy to support teachers.
Our core focus: to guide our company by LISTENING to teachers directly.
What has changed:
Our customer
Our business model
Our market focus
What is totally new:
Our products
Our positioning in the market
I’m proud of what’s the same, because when we started we were clear about what’s most important: listening to teachers directly. After school for coffee, through a weird survey I made an posted on Pinterest, in the feedback about our packs. We wanted to (and did! and do!) talk to any teacher willing to tell us the real stories of what it’s like to be an educator.
As we get rolling on our THIRD full school year, a lot hs changed! Our mission remains steadfast: “Make it easy to support teachers” is still our north star. But we’re changing a bit, based on what we learned in our first two years. It’s two things:
1. The problem is much bigger than school supplies, and it cannot be solved with teacher appreciation alone. (Bummer, because I love a good Triplus Fineliner)
2. The opportunity to make an impact is enormous, and it rests firmly in our ability to double down on what we’ve done well from the start: listening to teachers.
About a year ago, it clicked for me. Why I (not a teacher) was here in the first place. Why we were doing this. What we were building. What was mission-critical to the teacher retention problem, and what was “nice to have.”
The click-in happened for me at a conference of district HR teams. In my old COO-of-high-growth-technology-companies life, we called these “People Teams.” In that world, “HR” had moved beyond the I-dotting and T-crossing of HR compliance, and on to the focus of attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent — aka, Employee Engagement.
But at the conference, we noticed that the K12 Educational Sector was just arriving at the employee engagement party. Teams there were grappling with and discovering new tools for how to listen to their staff, how to have better one-on-one conversations, how to create meaningful incentives, and how to keep teachers in their roles. Buzzwords bandied about like “pulse surveys” and “wellbeing checks,” K12 professionals all discovering that they were competing with the private sector for their employees, and that districts weren’t always able to keep up.
This was our wheelhouse! Suddnely, our coffee dates and pulse surveys and checkins with teachers not only made sense as a practice — they made sense as a PRODUCT, a core offering of what we do.
I realized at that moment that Alpaca isn’t just about teacher recognition and support. It’s about two things:
1. Listening to teachers for real.
2. Acting on that information quickly in delightful, supportive ways.
Listening to our employees teachers us their communication styles, their love languages, the sentiment and words behind the news headlines. What’s underneath “burned out” or “exhausted” — is it a lack of time or a lack of confidence or a lack of peer collaboration?
Listening, paired with meaningful action is how we battle the lipservice many associate with asking teahcers to “remember their why” and the futile efforts to reward teachers with one special week each year.
Listening, paired with action is how we elevate the profession as, indeed, a PROFESSION, worth of serious discussion about the needs of the employee.
In two years, I’ve learned more about the profession of education than I could have ever imagined. I’m convinced that student and school outcomes start with teachers who feel energized and engaged about coming to work every day.
That’s not different than any employee anywhere, but we often forget that when it comes to the men and women tasked with our educational outcomes.
From that conference one brief year ago, Alpaca came home and got to work. We built a library of employee engagement resources that combine the best know-how from employee engagement across multiple sectors, with the unique needs of educator teams.
Then, we took the inputs from our first two years of anonymous product feedback and educator interviews and developed a vocabulary of words teachers used to describe work, and used it to build surveys and resources to help principals understand how their teachers are REALLY doing.
The result is a new product that I am so proud and excited for us to count as part of our core offering. Alpaca Pulse is a simple, one-minute survey designed to get to the heart of how teachers are doing, how to support them, and what they need right now.
We beta-tested the product in Spring 2024, and launched it fully this fall with 55 schools and districts, who are gathering thousands of insights every month from their teachers. We are then able to pair those insights with fantastic resources, ideas, and yes — care packages!! — designed to recognize and support teachers with what they need the most, right now.
My favorite part? We stopped thinking we knew what we were talking about.
We’re making it easy to support teachers, not with what we “think” they need, but with what we’re hearing from them each and every month. We’re creating a new way for teachers to have a voice in their workplace, and I believe it’s the path to supporting this profession in a way that can create major ripple effects for education.