Q3 2023 Investor Report
Team Letter | October 9, 2023
October 9, 2023
Hello Alpaca!
We’re gonna have our little brains FULL by the end of the week, and I know you’ve got a lot of great ideas already! I can’t wait. To level-set everyone with how we ended Q3, I wanted to share our Q3 investor report with you.
As part of the Alpaca team, each of you are ALSO investors in this company. You choose every day to work with us instead of some other place, and that means you’re investing your life and career in this work. When you’re an investor, it’s my job to give you regular reports on how we’re doing, where we’re going, and what we need next. So, dear investors, please find our Q3 report here. Please let me know if you have questions (always!!) and please know how grateful I am for the work that each of you do to make an investor report like this possible!
Hello, Alpaca Investors!
WOW, what a fun Q3 we had at Alpaca! We’ve got new customers, new revenue, new products, a new website & newsletter, and new team members. LET’S GO! Here’s the update!!
Key Metrics
MRR: $XX,XXX
MRR added in Q3: $XX,XXX MRR
Customers added in Q3: 11
ARPU: $
Total Teachers Supported: 2,297
Total Schools supported: 203
Total school districts: 67
Pipeline Added in Q3: $
Meetings Booked: 60 on a goal of 80
Monthly Burn: $
Updates
Our top objective in Q3 was to strengthen of our revenue story by diversifying our customer base and introducing demand generation to strengthen our funnel and deliver more value to future customers. I’m proud of the way the team worked together to accomplish some big goals.
New Customers! (And a new State!)
As a new school year kicked off, Alpaca added some new districts and schools! Our customer list now includes (in addition to our existing customers):
Westside Community Schools
Norris Public Schools
Arlington Public Schools
Archdiocese of Omaha Catholic Schools
Nelson Mandela School
Oelwin Community School District (Iowa)
West Liberty School District (Iowa)
Iowa Jobs for America’s Graduates
I am INCREDIBLY excited about the new partnership with Iowa Jobs for America’s Graduates! (IJAG). This nonprofit organization places educators at 103 schools in 60 districts across Iowa. They’ve contracted with us to support their educators 5 times this year, which gives us a new introduction to more than 100 new schools and principals, and 60 new districts teams, not to mention firmly establishes us in the state of Iowa. The best news is that IJAG is part of a national coalition of 40 state-wide programs that support educators, and we believe this is the start of an incredible new partnership. The iJAG educators just got their first packs last week and they are SO excited!
New Products!
School Survey: To help us deliver more value up front to prospects, we are building out some key resources for school leaders (aka principals, heads of school, and district staff) to use to support their teams of educators. In Q3, we launched the Get To Know Your Team Survey, a simple quiz to give principals easy ways to support and delight the teachers in their building. The survey is free and delivers value back to the school leader, and it has been downloaded and used by more than 100 principals so far! We have big goals to grow this in Q4.
Celebration Packs: To support schools that wanted an entry-level product and a way to create a teacher recognition program for their school, Alpaca launched this new offering. These packs are similar to our regular Alpaca gift packs, but come with a teacher recognition program to help principals celebrate 5 teachers in their school every month! We’ve sold this to Westside Schools and Oelwin Community Schools so far!
New Marketing!
WOW did our sales & marketing funnel get a makeover in Q3. To support a demand generation strategy going forward, we built the following in Q3:
A new website (Thank you to Bones Co!) much more positioned toward our audience of school leaders. Better information for districts, clearer messaging, and a focus on building our brand while booking meetings with school districts.
Resources for School Leaders: this new part of our website gives principals access to surveys, e-books, employee engagement strategies, helpful calendars, and fun activities to support their staff. Each one creates and nurtures Alpaca leads.
Our new newsletter – Little Wins! – built to deliver weekly tips and tricks for principals to engage and delight their teams. We already have hundreds of subscribers in our first 2 weeks!
Q4 Event Strategy: Alpaca piloted our first school leader trade show/event this September, which yielded 3 new sales (including the IJAG partnership). We were so well-received at the School Administrators of Iowa conference that we built a Q4 plan to sponsor and attend 6 more events. If you can’t find me, I’m at the airport or in the car!
New Team Members!
We got the opportunity to bring on board Alissa Christensen in August, a former (beloved!) OPS teacher as our new Customer Success Manager. Alissa is already working magic with the OPS partnership, Westside schools, and building resources for our marketing library. As we continue to grow, Alissa will help onboard and support our principals. She is AWESOME!
In addition to hiring Alissa, two of our team members are growing into new roles at Alpaca. Avalon and Kaitlynn both started last year as part of our “Pack Pit Crew” packaging up lovely goodies for our teachers. Kaitlynn has grown into a marketing and social media content focus, and Avalon has expanded their operations work to include inventory, ordering, and receiving.
Overall, the team is humming! We are spending some time together this week for Fall Retreat up at a camp in Wisconsin to get a head start on our 2024 goals and efforts!
Financing
From a fundraising perspective, my Q3 focus was on Alpaca’s plan for our next 24 months of growth, and my Q4 focus will be largely on achieving key revenue milestones while beginning the fundraising process, knowing full well that fundraising is challenging in the last 2 months of the year.
As you know already, Alpaca is shifting our focus away from being a fully parent-paid model toward a district-supported model with a focus on products and offerings to support teacher retention. Our offering, too, will shift a bit toward the surveys, insights, and data that we are able to get from our teachers with our packs, rather than on the packs alone, based on the customer feedback we’re receiving.
To accomplish our new model, I’m planning to raise a round of funding to build out our data and insights platform and continue growing our customer base and growth model. I’ve been talking with a few potential lead investors, and I’m excited about the opportunities ahead. Lots more to come on this in the last 3 months of the year!
How You Can Help
Right now, Alpaca needs a few key things:
Introductions to District Superintendents, Principals, and Heads of School. If you know someone, I’d love to meet them, even to show them our “future Alpaca” and get feedback.
Feedback on our future plans. If you’d be willing to get coffee or a beer and have me walk you through our 2024 plans, I’d be grateful for your input. I’ll send a deck ahead of time!
Meet with my team! I’m a firm believer in growing our future leaders, so we talk regularly about where we need mentoring and learning. If you have an hour and you know something about one of these things, I’d love to set up coffee with my team members:
Data analysis and visualization
How to manage people - we have some brand new managers!
Building a newsletter subscriber base
Scaling logistics/fulfillment
Best in Class internships
Alright?! Alright! Time to run, run, run toward our 2023 finish line – THANK YOU for investing in Alpaca, in our team, and in educators.