New Customers, New Leadership, New Features: What a great first quarter!
Q1 In Review | Team Letter | April 13, 2026
Happy Monday, Alpaca!
Thank you for your time last week at All Hands, Mini Hack Day, and Board Meeting — what a week! Q1 was one of our greatest learning quarters as a company. We won fantastic new customers, launched product features that make me smile every time I see them, and grew our leadership team with an eye on the future. There were more than a few moments that reminded me why we’re building this company in the first place, so I wanted to share them here!
Q1 Highlights
Our customers are growing with us, and seeing true positive change
I want to highlight one customer story that captures what we’re building toward. Council Bluffs Community School District is in their third year of partnership with Alpaca. Over time, we’re seeing a correlation of lowered teacher absenteeism with higher levels of positivity in the district. And most importantly: all 11 participating schools improved their positivity year over year. All of them!! We’re learning so much from the Council Bluffs team, and I’m so excited to continue to grow and learn together.
We crossed 500,000 Pulse insights.
This one is a quiet milestone that I think is actually enormous. We’ve now collected over half a million data points from educators across the country — giving Alpaca a true seat at the table educator in the emerging conversation on wellbeing and school culture. That data is the foundation of something big: our first School Culture Report, due out later this month. (More on this soon!)
Shoutouts came to life.
We officially launched Shoutouts — a simple, peer-to-peer recognition system for schools and districts — and educators have already shared more than 4000 shout-outs with their peers. Teachers and school leaders are using it to recognize each other in personal, meaningful ways. These aren’t automated “great jobs” but real, human, specific moments of gratitude.
We showed up big for education’s biggest conference
Our team showed up strong in Nashville for the AASA/NCE Conference! We booked over 100 demos with future customers with our largest presence at a conference ever. The booth was buzzing, the conversations were meaningful, and the energy was incredible. We learned how to talk about our product in new ways, and the “jobs to be done” for school districts.
Sales leadership to grow our future!
Jessica Johnston-Myers joined the Alpaca team as our Chief Sales Officer, full-time in March, and you already know — she is already making a huge impact. She’s hired and built our current SDR team and is bringing a level of rigor and ambition to our go-to-market that we’ve never had before. I cannot wait to see what this growing team is going to do in Q2!
What’s Ahead in Q2
We’ve got a HUGE quarter ahead! Here’s what we’re investing our energy in:
We’re launching major product updates — including the Little Wins Library, some new district tools and views, and improvements to Alpaca Pulse. These are the tools school leaders have been asking for, and I can’t wait to get them into their hands.
We’re publishing the 2026 School Culture Report — our first industry report on school culture and educator wellbeing, powered by 500,000+ teacher voice data points and 155 leader surveys. I am so excited to share what we’re learning by living our #1 company value: Listen to Teachers.
We’re hosting our first Little Wins Workshop — a customer and user conference designed to deepen relationships, gather feedback, and build community among school leaders using Alpaca. The speaker line-up is incredible, and I cannot wait to see leaders come together for this event!
We’re continuing to grow the team (know anyone looking to join an amazing sales org!?), learning from our customers, and building relationships with school and district leaders through events, conversations, and opportunities to build great tools together.
We’ve never been better positioned. And I’ve never been prouder of this team.
Let’s go make Q2 count!!
KB