The Work and the Why: Everything we're doing right now, mapped to our values and goals.
Team Letter | May 12, 2025
Monday, May 12, 2025
Happy Monday, Alpaca!
Anyone feel like we’re flying through Q2? This week is the halfway point in the quarter, and we have never seen so much new work launching in our company.
I don’t want to lose track of it all! And more importantly, I want to make sure we’re doing it for the right reasons. Today, I want to quickly review ALL of the big initiatives we’re taking on right now, along with the core value and 2025 goal they represent, to remind us why it’s worth our time, our focus, and our celebration!
As a reminder, our 2025 goal areas and goals are these:
So… what all are we working on this quarter? And more importantly, WHY? Let’s take a look!
Q2 2025 Work (and Why)
5,000 Packs to finish the school year strong!
Thanks to extraordinary planning and fantastic work by the operations team, Alpaca delivered 5,000 care packages to teachers all over the country, ALL in time for Teacher Appreciation Week in May. Huge celebration to Lila, Molly, and our delightful hourly crew for making it happen!
Core Value: Write Thank You Notes
2025 Goal: Professionalize Pack Design & Fulfillment
Camp Alpaca - 1,000 Hours of Educator Input
Camp Alpaca is going to be huge! We’re hosting 24 amazing educators in Omaha in June to learn creative skills, build Alpaca’s digistial resources, and contribute to the future of Alpaca’s framework and product. I don’t know what all we’ll learn, what we’ll build together, or how it will impact each educator, but I do know that 1,000 educator hours will change our company for the better.
Core Value: Listen to Teachers
2025 Goal: Create an Educator Network
Go To Market Focus — 4 Marketing Motions, 1 Sales Motion
Last week we gathered the marketing, sales, and CS teams to dive deep into what it takes to scale revenue at Alpaca, from our sales tactics to our marketing messaging to our event strategy. (Hello, Demos!) We’ll be putting it ALL to work immediately, and across 11 events this quarter. We’ve introduced an outbound sales motion, hired an energetic team to do it with Kaitlynn and Molly, and we’ve filled the pipeline thanks to Kimberly and our strong Q1 marketing effort. We have our eyes fully on one goal — and we’re going to win it.
Core Value: Elevate Every Educator
2025 Goal: 100% Revenue and Customer Growth
Educator Wellbeing Report
This summer, we’ll be publishing a report on the findings of our first full year of checking in with educators using Alpaca Pulse. We have more than 100,000 inputs from real educators in the field about how they feel at work, and what they need right now. We see it month to month, but we’re about to see it all together, and I feel like a kid on Christmas. Data!
Core Value: Listen to teachers
2025 Goal: Publish Original Research
200 School Leader Resources & 10,000 Little Wins Subscribers
We are knocking on the door of some audacious goals! Alpaca’s school culture resources have never been more popular, and they’re only getting better, thanks to Alissa’s leadership, and the network of educators she’s building to help us create new resources every single week. What’s even better? Those resources are going out to ALMOST 10,000 school leaders every single week through the Little Wins newsletter. Add Camp Alpaca to the mix, and we’re going to be on fire!
Core Value: Elevate Every Educator
2025 Goal: 20K Little Wins Subscribers, Build a network of educators
The Little Wins Podcast
Speaking of Little Wins…OMG It’s happening! So much more to come on this but it has been so fun to begin interviews with some of the leaders across the country building strategies for school culture that are just beyond impressive. I’m still getting my bearings on how to be a podcast host, but our production team at Old Soul is making it easy (and fun!). I see so much opportunity in building the positive narrative of education with leaders across the country. You heard it here first - The Little Wins Podcast is launching in late May!
Core Value: Tell Stories
2025 Goal: Interview 100 School Leaders and Create a Published Work
Penn GSE Business Plan Competition
Alpaca was chosen as a semi-finalist for the highly regarded business plan competition for education-focused companies, and this summer, we’ll be engaged with their Catalyst accelerator as part of the competition! This is a tremendous opportunity to hone our goto market strategy and learn a lot about how research can support our product and growth.
Core Value: Bring out the best
2025 Goal: 100% Revenue and Customer Growth, Publish Original Research
The Summer Studio
THIS week is big — this is our opportunity to reimagine our survey experience and build value for educators! Our product and marketing teams will be in Austin this week building the next generation of our educator check-in, using the data from real educators that we’ve gathered in the past year. The 10 designers we have working on this project are nothing short of incredible, and I cannot wait to see what happens!
Core Value: Listen to teachers
2025 Goal: Deliver new value through our product, Improve ACV
—— WHEW!!! ——
So, just those things! I know we’re all running hard, and there is SO much work to do. So, I want to ask something of you as we walk through the second half of the quarter, and the full lead up to the 2025-26 school year.
Three questions to ask ourselves right now
The simple truth is that with all of this awesome stuff going on, it could be easy to get distracted, try to do it all, or to take our focus away from what matters. So, as you’re planning your day and time, I’d like to ask you to ask three questions of each thing in front of you this week:
1. Is this driving customer and revenue growth for our company?
If the answer is definitely yes, double down on your effort. Work so hard that you see if we can push the limits of what’s possible. If the answer is definitely no, be brave and say “I don’t think I/we should do this like this anymore, and here’s why, and here’s what we might do instead.”
2. Am I additive to this project, or do I just want to be there?
All of this stuff is SO fun, and we learn so much from working TOGETHER on things. That collaboration is essential! But we can’t all do all of it. Each of us has SO much to add to this work listed above. Find the place where you can make the most impact, and make it there. And if someone (like, say, your CEO) is standing in the way of progress because they’re super busy, gently let them know that you’re blocked. Then, be willing to hear “I need you to own this now.” Audacious autonomy, friends!
3. Can we accomplish this better AND faster somehow?
The theme this year is “Think Big.” When you’re looking at HOW to do something, don’t ask “What would it take to improve 20%?” Instead, ask “What if we HAD to improve 250%?” Would you find some new tools? Ask for help? Cut out a step that doesn’t really matter? Say no to something else that takes your time? Good. Do those things. And then do them again. If it breaks something, you’ll know, and we’ll fix it.
These are BIG questions to ask of ourselves and of each other. But the theme is Think Big, so I’m asking it of each of us. Myself included.
The thing is, if we accomplish that entire list above, with great quality and great joy and great work as a team, well then, to quote my favorite Kimberlyism, “What’s the BEST that could happen?”
Let’s go, Alpaca!
KB
