Be Obsessed.
I fell in love with the problem.
I applied to Harvard Business School and Kennedy School of Government joint degree program to focus on creating access to affordable higher education, 5 years ago. Since then, everything I have done has revolved around that mission.
Small pivots
In 2010, before graduate school, I worked at Teach For America’s Strategy & Innovation group. On the side, I worked on a peer-to-peer coaching program called USAdelante, focused on ‘scaling mentorship’ by pairing students to coach each other using guided exercises. We tested, pivoting around different structures for guided exercises, using videos instead of people, and ending up with peer-conference calls as a desired solution.
After a summer of testing with students and pitching to schools, we could not find a sustainable business model and discontinued the project.
(Product) restart
Next I realized that a team goes farther than a lone soldier, so I looked for individuals passionate about education and started on the next startup focused on increasing high school graduation rates. RedOwl. A ‘siri for high school students to get peer advice’.
We chose a text-based solution as teens love to text, but in the end, they did not use it continuously. When attempting to sell to schools, they would not pay for it. Also we got feedback on the branding from teens that is was ‘not cool enough’. In addition, what teens really wanted — they said — was to make money.
After much feedback we made significant changes.
Major pivot
We created Plexx, a mobile app to deliver job training on your phone for high school graduates to help them get the skills to get jobs. We were a summer venture in resident at the Blueridge foundation.
We received a grant from the Robinhood Foundation, we partnered with an organization called Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow and were testing with youth. Everything was going great until it all went wrong — at the same time.
The youth barely used the application, and what our partner wanted us to create, users did not want to use. My gut said major change was needed, and I believed we were on the verge of a restart. I confronted my co-founder and said I believed we needed to change direction. My co-founder disagreed. As a result, I was pushed out of the startup.
(Self) restart
After that, I was quite lost. I took time to reflect and obtain skills in areas I felt I was lacking — rapid prototyping (design) and investing. I spent a year working at a design and innovation consulting firm and then a summer in venture capital before returning to finish my graduate program.
During that time, I ventured away from education and participated in a number of mission-oriented projects. The goal was to apply my design and innovation skills outside of education. One project was KORK, an eco-friendly wallet made of cork instead of leather.
Another was a CodeTimer, a smart watch app helping emergency medical professionals improve how they administer CPR and save lives.
When returning to graduate school, I contemplated what I should to do next and returned to the essay I wrote in my application. Five years earlier, I wanted to build…
I had pivoted myself, but ended up back at the beginning.
I had become skilled at identifying concepts to solve tough problems, and was being enticed to revisit the problem I first fell in love with. So I did.
Pivoting
I revisited the mission of ‘redesigning higher education to better serve all people’. My major assumptions at this point were ‘people want to engage in one off classes’ and ‘schools are interested in filling individual course seats’.
After interviewing over 50 people, college stop-outs, career changers, and entrepreneurs, I began to modify the original idea. We started with the concept of a marketplace to discover degrees, then to create degrees, then served people with degrees, then without degrees, then high schools, then colleges…then we pivoted to where we are now.
After working with higher education systems for years we learned that a true alternative is needed and that being a founder can actually be the pathway to providing economic opportunity for all. In that vein we created RBL1 (Rebel One). We are in the early days of testing with a small group of aspiring founders, but in bridging the gap from hackathon to accelerator, we believe there is a real market need. If you are a ‘future founder’ and want to join the first pilot sign up on our website. There is a lot of work to do. Lets keep going.
