In our Software Era
Team Letter | September 3, 2024
September 3, 2024
Happy Monday, Alpaca!!!
WOW, what a fantastic last week of August we had. There were bells ringing left and right – hello, SEVEN new customers in one week! Please welcome to the Alpaca family Odyssey Program in Portland Public Schools, Eagle Pointe Elementary School, Carolina Christian Academy, Kodiak Island Borough School District, Everton R-III School District, Rosslyn Academy Lower School, and Meadow Montessori School!
Does everyone remember when a single one of these would be cause for celebration for a month? I do, and this is way better!
Beyond new customers, we also saw some impressive numbers on the board in marketing, with our Alpaca resources reaching a record number of customers for the 9th month in a row, our Little Wins subscribers just toe-ing the line for 5,000 (making us wait until September but SO CLOSE!)
But today, we’ve got a celebration that we’ve NEVER had before. Today, we’re celebrating the launch of Alpaca Pulse, our own software product. Today, more than 3,000 teachers in 113 schools are participating in a completely new way to talk about how they’re doing at work. Principals at those 113 schools have a new set of tools to support their staff.
In our first month out of the gate, we heard from 1,000 of those 3,000 teachers. We want that number to grow and grow. And it will! This week, we’re launching Alpaca Pulse for Substitutes (nbd, just a second iteration of the product right out of the gate!) to support our client at High Desert Educational Service District, where we hope to survey another 1,000 teachers every month about their experience substitute teaching.
It’s not overstating things to say that this software launches Alpaca into a new era. Software companies tend to have a different trajectory than direct to consumer subscription box companies. Software is typically more compelling to our customers in the sales process – think about the difference between “a $35/year system to listen to teachers every month” vs. “a $35 care package for one staff member” – more value, yes? It’s more scalable, allowing us to bring on seven customers in a week without blinking an eye. There are endless possibilities for where we could take this software and what we could provide as value back to schools and districts. And of course, the margins are better when you don’t have to order $20 worth of inventory for every $30 of revenue. (And we all know the pain of counting inventory after last week!)
We are moving so fast and we have our eyes set on such BIG goals ahead, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to pause and recognize what a milestone this is for our company. For that reason, I want to take a moment to recognize the team that conceptualized, designed, built, tested, and launched this extraordinary first product for our team. I’m going in order of when people joined this crazytrain effort:
Nicholas Petersen: Nicholas met with me and Kimberly last December, after we’d started to hear district HR leaders asking for “pulse surveys” and “employee NPS” tools. I knew we were going to raise money to build software, and asked Nicholas to help us design a prototype we could show, sell, and build from. The “hive dots” were born and absolutely took the idea that was ill-formed in our brain and brought it to life in a way I could never have imagined. Every time I look at this product, and at the future designs for it, I marvel. I simply love it, and so do our customers. And according to Maci, “Nicholas can do things in Figma that I had no idea were possible.” Thank you, Nicholas, for being an extraordinary designer, teacher, and team member to all of us. Let’s keep going.
Tyler Halstead: In Jaunary-ish, Tyler and I started chatting about the idea of getting off of our survey platform where we had no control over future features or extensibility. In a matter of a couple of weeks, and with extraordinary communication and professionalism for his client (that’s me) who doesn’t know much about being a client (that’s true), managed to re-platform our survey onto our own system. Since then, Tyler has kept on building, designing, imagining, and mentoring this project along. Every time I think I’m bringing a too-big problem to the table, Tyler says “oh, we can do that. I’ll try something today and let you know what it looks like.” Thanks for making me a better client (I hope) and for nurturing our team so beautifully, Tyler.
Matt Secoske & the Nimblelogic Team: (That sounds like a band that we should start) You know when someone just GETS it? That’s how I felt the first time I walked through our prototype and slide deck at Lazlo’s in Lincoln with Matt, in about March of this year. We talked about the possibilities (he saw them), the customer (he knows them), the marketing ideas (he dorks out about them), and the opportunity for our company (he sees it). As our fractional CTO, Matt’s support and that of his team at Nimblelogic helped us get the Nebraska Prototype Grant, allowed us to team up FAST to get thing built, and regularly challenges me with excellent questions that I have been avoiding talking about for awhile. He’s probably still mad at me for promising the substitute survey, and he should be, but he never shows it. Unwavering optimism combined with pragmatic logic and experience? That’s the CTO support we’ve needed, and I’m so so grateful for it.
Maci McWilliams: And our newest newcomer, but arguably one of the most extraordinary contributors to this effort is Maci McWilliams, joining us in July and IMMEDIATELY jumping in. She didn’t just jump in to building software, she jumped in to understanding the customer. Understanding the challenges they’re facing. Understanding what we’ve already built, what we have ahead, and how to temper my expectations. :) Maci has contributed an extraordinary amount of work, code, ideas, design, and heart to this project in an incredibly short period of time, and will now own the product going forward at Alpaca. She is steadfast in her optimism, but holds the line for the trade-offs that we must make for every feature and change we wish for. We couldn’t be luckier to have Maci on this team.
Today, we’ll celebrate the launch of Alpaca Pulse, and with it, the launch of Alpaca into our “software era.” We’re a stronger company now, because we NOW have a product that has the opportunity to scale and grow at the same rate as our mission and ambition as a team.
And in a quarter that is all about building momentum, this, my friends, has the momentum of moving train.
♥️
Kb