Grateful for Together
Team Letter | Thanksgiving Day 2024
November 28, 2024
Dear Alpaca Family,
If there is one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s that there is no building a company alone. Over the past year, our little team has opened our arms to 75+ new districts and schools around the country (and world!) and to 7,000+ educators. That’s because our team, our consultants, our investors, our friends, and our customers came together to do big things together.
Growing this way can’t be done with any single effort — it requires product expansion and pilot programs and good writing and big pitches and conference travel and heavy lifting and software development and resource building and list building and pack building and fundraising and bookkeeping and a steadfast belief that if we just keep going, it’s going to work.
I am grateful for your big, weird ideas. Keep ‘em coming.
I am grateful for 10 and 90 and everything in between.
I am grateful that you are unafraid to pick up the phone.
I am grateful that you are unafraid to visit any customer.
I am grateful that you haul enormous, awkward exhibit booths across the country and back, over and over and over.
I am grateful for your artfully done thank-you notes that you do on the weekends.
I am grateful that you are unafraid to say something’s not working.
I am grateful for the office clean-up you might not think I notice. I do.
I am grateful for your grace when I try to cram too much into a day.
I am grateful for your support of each others’ personal and professional goals.
I am grateful for AI-generated images of Alpacas in the winter.
I am grateful for post-it note wireframes at your desk.
I am grateful that you teach yourself to do things so that we can grow.
I am grateful for tens of thousands of educator insights that guide our product and everything we do.
I am grateful that, at a conference that people say “WOW your brand is amazing — I had to come see what YOU do.”
I am grateful for the holy table and the work that gets done on a Friday there.
I am grateful for the introductions that magically appear from our investors - I know you’re working in the background to make us look amazing.
I am grateful for the colleague companies that help us get in the right rooms, because they believe in what we’re doing.
I am grateful for the early customers who believe in what’s possible and are willing to put up with the early prototypes.
I am grateful that you go the extra mile to make it both right AND special.
I am grateful for birthdays at the office and cozy field trips and lunch on Mondays.
I am grateful that you ask big questions.
I am grateful that you keep going. And keep going. And keep going.
It’s working, because we’re doing it together. And I’m so grateful.
I am wishing each of you the most delightful day of gratitude and joy. Thank you for building this work together. I’ll see you Monday to finish the year strong.
With gratitude,
KB
