Omer (00:11.680)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talked to Lindy Ladohowski, the co founder and CEO of Essay Jack, a SaaS product that makes it easier for students to write essays and get better grades.
It helps to reduce writing anxiety, procrastination, and plagiarism.
Lindy is a former teacher and research professor.
Before launching Sajak, she'd never run a company before, let alone a software business.
And when she started out, she had zero technical skills.
She didn't even know how to register a website domain.
She founded the company with her husband, Ruben, who's a law professor.
So neither of the founders had a tech or software background, yet they've gone on to build a software product that's now used by over 12,000 students, and their business is generating around $500,000 in annual revenue.
It's a great story.
In this episode, you'll learn how Lindy overcame her lack of technical skills and experience to turn her idea into a product that she could get into the hands of students.
We'll also show you how the two co founders used a surprisingly simple approach to growing their business and how it's helped them to get to 12,000 active users.
And you'll learn how they started selling their product before their website could even handle payments, and how they've grown to half a million dollars a year.
If you've ever felt like you being held back or don't have all the skills you need to build and grow your SaaS business, then this story might just give you a little inspiration.
I hope you enjoy it.
Lindy, welcome to the show.
Lindy Ledohowski (02:14.560)
Thanks very much for having me.
Omer (02:16.900)
Now, I always like to ask my guests what gets them out of bed, what drives or motivates them about their business?
Do you have a favorite quote?
Or maybe in your own words?
Just tell us what motivates you about working on your business?
Lindy Ledohowski (02:28.500)
Yeah, yeah, I do.
Thanks for asking.
I do have a favorite quote and I'll explain how it relates to the business.
Because this is one of my favorite quotes in life and it's a quote from John Milton, the fellow who wrote Paradise Lost.
But in another piece that he wrote, he has this really great line that back when I was young, I thought I was going to get tattooed on myself.
But in the end I decided I could just sort of hold the quote in my Mind.
So the quotation is, that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.
And that comes from a pamphlet, a speech that Milton gave in defense of freedom of press and sort of that idea that the truth and knowledge is best earned and best learned in the cut and thrust of disagreement.
So it's only by being faced with opposing views.
Views or opposing forces that you can kind of clarify your own views.
So how that relates to business and to life in general, for me is that idea that, you know, that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.
So it's the things that are difficult that are worthwhile and make us better.
And certainly, you know, starting a business is difficult, but those struggles ultimately make me better.
So that's kind of where the inspiration comes from.
Omer (03:48.150)
I'm glad you explained that, because when you said it, it went right over my head, you know, and that's what happens when you interview a professor.
Lindy Ledohowski (03:55.390)
Right, I was gonna say.
And then the other thing, of course, is like, yes, sure, you know, the lady with the PhD in English pulls out this esoteric quote from John Milton.
So, I mean, I did have to start off being like the uber nerd.
So, you know, now you're really knowing what motivates me.
Omer (04:11.910)
So tell us about S.A. jack.
What's the problem you're trying to solve for who?
And just give us an overview of what the product does.
Lindy Ledohowski (04:20.310)
Yeah, yeah.
Essay Jack is, as I say, it's a writing software.
Essay Jack is a literacy platform.
So in its most basic sense, it's an essay drafting tool.
So what Essay Jack does is it has digitized the drafting process, drafting in terms of writing.
So I'm old enough that back in ye olden days when I learned how to write for school, I wrote by pen, you know, on a piece of paper, and I had to write an outline for my essays.
And then I would go to word processing and type it up and submit things for marks.
And in our world now, where many students are digital natives, they aren't going to pen and paper first as part of their writing process.
Their writing process begins with a blank word processing screen.
And so that drafting, that outlining that ability to organize one's thoughts for academic writing is a skill that's kind of been lost or it's fading out.
And so we really wanted to reintroduce that.
And that's what Essay Jack does.
To put it another way, it's that missing link between content acquisition and writing a final prose.
So anybody can do A Google search and find out all kinds of content.
But then how do you get that content into a structured piece of writing?
And so we've been focusing on the essay.
That's why it's essay Jack.
But.
But we also have all kinds of custom templates for any business proposals.
Lab reports, abstracts, you know, book reports, all kinds of writing that has a typical and generic structure to it.
Omer (05:53.860)
So your users are the students themselves, and I believe.
So you said like the between 13 and 21 years old is kind of like the typical target user for you, but your customers are either the parents or kind of educational institutions, right?
Lindy Ledohowski (06:16.110)
Yeah.
So Sajak as a platform, it kind of has two parallel business lines running.
So one is really that appeals to and is easy for students to use.
The other is the sort of B2B extensive functionality.
So teachers and professors, when they log in in an institutional context, they have control over the entire essay JAC platform.
So, for instance, you know, the way that the platform works, we have tips and prompts and sentence starters and all kinds of things to help guide students through their writing process.
But if it's an institutional context, if I'm, say, a teacher, and in my school we have an SAJAC license, I can go in and I can customize it for my students, either in as a class, as a whole, or maybe, you know, little Johnny or little Susan needs more help or less help.
I can create custom templates for individual students with their individual learning needs.
So it hits at all of those kind of students can use it independently.
But then we are also working with schools, colleges and universities.
And as you said, our age range is the 13 to 21.
So that's obviously a huge.
That's a pretty broad swath.
And so usually with the middle school and high school students, Essay JAC is used in an institutional context where teachers will use essay jack to teach these fundamental writing skills that are part of most middle school and high school curricular requirements.
So critical thinking, critical writing, all of that.
At the college and university level, it is more about being able to support what professors and college instructors are teaching from a content perspective.
So if I'm a nursing instructor, I don't want to actually have to spend time teaching writing.
I want my students to submit writing, but I want them to submit writing that is about nursing.
And so SAJAC then comes in and supports in terms of providing that framework for the type of writing that those students will be engaged in.
Omer (08:18.540)
Now, I alluded to this earlier that, you know, you don't have a typical Background of what we'd expect from a SaaS founder or a tech entrepreneur.
You've been a teacher and a research professor.
So how did you go about, you know, getting into this space?
Like, where did the idea for SA Jack come from?
Lindy Ledohowski (08:40.550)
Yeah, I joke about this with people who know me, which is I'm almost this sort of reluctant entrepreneur brought into to sort of business kicking and screaming.
This wasn't, you know, people ask like, oh, when you were little, did you always want to grow up and have a business or, you know, all this?
I was like, no, not really.
I liked reading books, I liked writing.
And so, you know, as you say, I was a high school English teacher and then I went on and did a, you know, master's PhD, postdoc, all the rest of it, and became an academic professor.
And that was sort of where I thought my career was going to go.
And it was quite interesting.
I had this conversation with my department chair at one point.
I had what's called in the academy a tenure track job.
So you get this sort of first full time job and you're on the track to tenure.
And my chair sort of sat me down.
We were sitting here, said, oh, you know what, I don't want you to stress about tenure.
You've got enough publications, you'll get tenure for sure.
And for many, many academics in my situation, that's the most wonderful news you could ever get.
And I just had this really sort of uncomfortable feeling where I thought, oh, I'm now seeing how my life can unfold for the next 35 years.
I know exactly what I'll be doing day in, day out.
I know what my salary range is going to be in day in, day out.
And there was a degree of stability that came with that, that I felt I was too ambitious is maybe the way to put it, to feel comfort, comforted by that stability.
And so one of the things already I was feeling as I was an academic that maybe there's more, maybe there's something different.
And maybe being a full time academic isn't what I thought it was going to be.
So I already had that kind of discontent with being a full time professor.
And then one of the things that really hit home as I was a full time professor is that I would teach English to these sort of wonderful, bright, motivated, keen students, but they may not have had the required skills to master academic writing.
So, you know, we'd have class and they would say smart things and then they'd hand in essays.
And their intelligence and insight wasn't always reflected in their written assignments.
And I thought, well, you know, the teaching semester is 12 weeks.
I'm teaching five novels.
I don't have time to sort of back up and teach those things that they're maybe missing.
And I thought, well, you know what?
Technology can fill this gap.
Technology is this great equalizer.
Students shouldn't be penalized by the time they get to post secondary education because maybe luck of the draw, they didn't master those skills earlier on.
Maybe they're from an international context where the things that they were trained in is different than what we would expect in the sort of Anglo American in academic context.
So that's kind of the genesis.
And I thought, well, you know what, let's sit down and see if we can't develop technology to sort of answer this question around academic writing.
I mean, I think in the US businesses spend something like $3 billion a year in writing remediation for people once they've already graduated universities and are at work.
Like this problem of sort of an inability to write successfully is a really huge problem.
And I felt a bit devastated sort of participating in it just as a professor.
And I thought, well, there's more that I can do for sure.
Omer (11:58.610)
Okay, so you sort of see this need that, you know, something that technology can help your students with.
But how does an English teacher and professor go about kind of turning that into a product?
Like, what did you do?
Lindy Ledohowski (12:15.970)
So that's basically the million dollar question.
So, you know, yeah, you hit the nail on the head.
I mean, the summary is, okay, great.
I've identified this problem, this thing that I want to create.
And so really my co founder, who also happens to be my husband, he and I, and he's a law professor now, he's sort of being pulled full time into SA Jack as well.
But at the time he was on sabbatical and we really were working together and quite literally cutting out pieces of paper and moving it around on a desk sort of to sort of map out what a technical workflow could be for this product.
We hadn't yet even sort of thought through.
We didn't have a name for it yet or anything like that.
But we were just sort of thinking, okay, if we were to build essay writing software, what would it do?
How would it function?
What are the kind of principles that we would want to adhere to as professors?
So we're not interested in the SA mill industry where students are paying somebody else to write for them and plagiarizing and really doing a disservice for themselves.
So we Thought, okay, let's, let's kind of figure out what this would be.
And then we ended up having a meeting with the fellow who ended up being the prototype developer for us who built the early iteration of SA Jack.
And we sort of met at this restaurant and I sort of had a PowerPoint and some, you know, as I say, cut out pieces of paper.
And I sort of walked him through what this product was supposed to do and he said, okay, okay, I think, you know, I kind of get what you're, what you're talking about.
I'll, I'll go away and see what I can pull together.
So he did a really basic proof of concept for SA Jack in about, I think it was four weeks.
And then he came back and we were sitting in our apartment and he opened the laptop and sort of walked us through it and, and we just sort of sat there and said, oh my gosh, it works.
I mean, it works the way we wanted it to.
And it was this really magical moment to see something which was just an idea in your head appear in real life on a computer that you could interact with and play with.
And so then we had the question of, oh, okay, great, you know, it works for us.
But yeah, of course it works for us.
It came out of our head.
We now need to get it in front of some people.
So we went down to a high school, a very good international school, and got in front of some of the IB students for our very first test.
And we basically walked in, gave them access to Essay Jack and asked them to write an in class essay.
We gave them no instruction on how to use Essay Jack, what it was, what it was supposed to do.
We just wanted to sort of see if in the absence of anything else, they could sit there for 90 minutes with our platform and write an in class essay.
And they loved it.
They ended up sort of walking out of the class being like, that was way more fun than writing an in class essay.
And their teacher was saying, no, no, no, you just wrote an in class essay.
And so that gave us the courage to kind of keep going and testing and refining and go from there.
Omer (15:14.720)
How kind of involved were you in that process?
Was it just like he just came back after four weeks and said, here's the product or was there a lot of back and forth?
Lindy Ledohowski (15:24.480)
Yes.
So that first time, that first, you know, from meeting for dinner and showing him, you know, cut up pieces of paper and a broad sort of description of what it is that we wanted, that was, he sort of went away and then Came back and showed us what we wanted.
Then it became very involved and sort of every, you know, now again I look back on it and, you know, cringe for the poor guy because basically every five minutes I was like, okay, now can it do this?
Can it do this?
How does it do this?
How do we, you know, things like registering domain names and like just all of those sorts of things which now are core and easy parts of any technology business.
At the time I knew nothing about.
And so this guy was sort of roped into being sort of my go to IT guy.
And I mean, obviously it was, you know, fee for service he was paid, but it became quite involved where it was like, okay, so now Sajak needs to do this, or oh, we need to add this or it's not doing this, or, you know, and we really sort of were trying to refine it for those first few months when we had that early proof of concept.
Omer (16:39.320)
Okay, so you've got the product, you kind of get it in front of some students, you get positive feedback.
What did you do next?
Lindy Ledohowski (16:49.000)
So we then we had a friend and colleague who at the time worked for IBM, so we gave him him access to the code base because again, we knew nothing about code.
But what we did know was the academy, which is shaped by peer review.
And so you always get experts to look at your research and to sort of weigh in.
So we sort of took that principle and said, okay, well let's get peer review or code review of what's been written so far, because we're not the ones to be able to analyze whether or not this code is spaghetti or what.
So we had our friends sort of look at the code and make some recommendations, give us a degree of confidence that the developer we were working with was not insane, wasn't building something that was utterly and completely unsustainable.
Even though at this time it was still always understood to just be sort of a proof of concept and a prototype.
But we went and did a number of other testing scenarios.
So with that early.
We call it the SA Jack Alpha, but it was really our early prototype.
We tested it with, in total it was over 200 students and about 10 different teachers and professors and in a variety of different contexts.
It was grade eights, grade 11s, grade 12s, and then it was five different university classes.
There was a business ethics class, a Victorian literature class, a writing class, a history class.
So to try to really get use case data from all of these different student profiles, but also the instructor profile.
So what is it that the Teachers and the professors really wanted to see because we knew that our greatest asset as an ed tech company, or at this time, we didn't even really know we were going to be an ed tech company.
But as an ed tech product builder, we knew our greatest asset was the fact that we ourselves were scholars.
We knew what the expectations were of scholarly writing, we knew what people are looking for.
We know the pedagogy behind composition and writing and all of that.
And so we wanted to ensure that we had that buy in from institutions because we realized that's going to be our best and easiest way in to this industry that at that time we knew nothing about.
And so a lot of the early feedback on that prototype, both from the students and the instructors, informed what then became the beta product, which we allowed out much more broadly from that early prototype.
As I say, the early prototype had just over 200 student testers, whereas the beta product had over 2000 users, most of whom were paying.
Omer (19:32.850)
How did you get access to those first 200 students?
How do you walk into a school and, you know, or college and just say, hey, you know, can we get your students using this product?
And it's not fully baked, not sure if it really works, but let's take some of the teachers time and the students time and test this out.
Lindy Ledohowski (19:54.070)
So basically that's exactly what we did.
We sort of walked in and said, hey, we've got this thing we show.
Can.
Can we show your students?
To be honest, there were a couple of different ways in.
So with this, this school that we worked with, this very good IB school, so we knew people in the school.
So obviously there was the relationship, equity at play.
This is also where, you know, I'm, to this day, I'm a member of the Ontario College of Teachers.
So I'm a qualified and registered high school teacher.
I was a high school teacher.
So the degree of confidence of putting me in front of a classroom is one that the teachers had.
So I wasn't an ed tech salesperson.
I was a person who could teach literature.
And so the value proposition as well was, you know, in many cases it was not only about the product, but it was about, you know, I can come in and I can provide a demo of the tool, which also doubles as a bit of a writing instruction for your students.
And so that was one of the value propositions at the beginning.
But as well, the first thing before any student saw Essay Jack was all of the teachers, the administrators, the vice principals, the principals, we had to do the demo and get their Buy in as well.
They had to be excited by Sajac, and they were.
And at every step of the way, instructors absolutely see the value of Sajac.
So we really do speak their language.
And I think that's partly being an insider as an educator.
So to go back to one of your first questions about, about, like, basically, how does, how does somebody go from, from being, you know, you know, an educator to being an ed tech entrepreneur?
And I think this is one of those sort of key moments where having a foot in both camps was really helpful.
So, for instance, when we wanted to test the prototype at the University of Toronto, which is, you know, one of the top ranked universities in the world, and we sort of went in and thought, oh, we'll show it to.
That's where I did my PhD.
So I thought, oh, well, we'll show it to some of the professors we know.
And we quickly were sort of elevated up to, I think it was the vice dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
And the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Toronto is the largest faculty of its kind, I think, in North America.
And immediately the Vice dean said, you know, yeah, this is great.
Let's do a pilot.
Let's get this in some classes and see what students and teachers have to say as well.
When I was doing my PhD at the University of Toronto, I taught writing at one of the suburban campuses, the University of Toronto, Scarborough.
And the woman who had taken over the writing center at that campus, I had known from back when I used to teach there.
And so when I approached her and said, hey, could I sort of show this to some of your writing instructors and see what they have to say, see what they think, get their feedback?
She was really open and amenable to that.
So again, that's my long winded way of saying relationship equity goes really far.
And so being able to sort of use your networks and rely and lean on those networks is, in my experience, really, really helpful.
Omer (22:54.850)
Okay, so.
So it's one thing to go into a school or college and do what you just said and get a few hundred students using your product for free.
It's another thing to get what you said.
It was like the next 2,000 students paying for it.
So how did you go about starting to charge for the product?
Lindy Ledohowski (23:18.090)
Yeah, so with those 200 students.
So that was sort of 2014, 2015, when we were sort of playing around with this early prototype.
By 2015, we were sort of committed to taking all of that feedback and building what became the SA Jack Beta.
Product.
And so that product we were ready to sort of launch in the market September 1, 2015.
When I say ready to launch in the market, that sounds a lot more serious than it actually was.
We basically had a product and we thought, okay, let's go see if somebody's going to pay for it again.
One of our friends and colleagues who we had met along the way headed up an education technology company that is what he's now just recently sold it, I think for something like 66 million.
So he's done quite well for himself.
But it was a distributor of a variety of Microsoft products to post secondary education students.
So we had shown him the early essay Jack just to sort of get his insight on the industry.
And he had said, so the most important thing you have to do is see if somebody's going to pay for this.
And so pick a price, whatever that price is going to be.
But the sooner you know whether people will open their wallets for this product, the sooner you know that you have a business, or at least business potential.
So that was one of those sort of key insights that we really took to heart.
And so with one of the early schools that we went to just before launching in summer of 2015 and we demoed to the teachers and sort of got their buy in, they were really excited.
And then we just picked a price for all, I think it was all of the grade 10 students to have access to SA Jack for a full year.
And the teachers and we sort of gave them the demo and the price in the morning.
By the afternoon they called and said, yep, they were ready to go and they issued us a check.
It has never been that fast since.
But, but that certainly again gave us that confidence to go and assert a price for the product.
And then similarly, whenever we would go and demo that, that beta product to schools and, and colleges and teachers, they immediately said, okay, how much is it?
And so they, their expectation already was that this was a four pay product.
And so that again sort of helped us when we opened up the pay gateways just for individual students to sign up and subscribe.
I think we have those pay gateways done by maybe September 3, 2015.
Within three weeks we had our first sort of individual paying user who signed up and opened her wallet and pulled out her credit card.
Omer (26:03.600)
Okay, there's a few things to unpack here, so let me take a stab at doing that.
So firstly, how did you come up with the price?
What was the process you went through?
Lindy Ledohowski (26:15.280)
Yes, so pricing.
And to be honest, we still do change some of our.
I mean, there are a variety of different sort of pricing models out there that even we employ.
So.
And bulk licenses, we have reduced prices versus an individual student subscriber.
But how we hit on a price at the beginning, we really used as a principle that essay Jack, in many ways, is like a writing textbook on steroids.
It's interactive, it's built by experts.
It can be used for writing across multiple disciplines.
And so we looked at various writing textbooks and set our price based on that.
So we said, well, if, you know, if on average, university students are spending $600 a year on textbooks and, you know, breaks down into different courses and all the rest.
But we looked at various, you know, sort of textbook prices, and we thought, okay, so somewhere within 60 to $100 per year is kind of textbook price.
So let's price it as a textbook and see what happens.
Omer (27:15.570)
Okay, got it.
That makes sense.
Now you kind of.
I think you struck it lucky in terms of telling them the price in the morning and getting a check that quickly.
My experience from talking to people who've built or tried to build sort of education tech companies, one of the common things I often hear is how difficult it is to get money to get paid.
It could just be because if you try and charge individual teachers, they don't necessarily necessarily, you know, have a lot of money to.
To start, you know, buying these products.
Schools have budgets to work within.
Going to a school district is kind of even tougher because then you have to, you know, think about the needs of, you know, dozens, if not more, you know, hundreds of schools.
Has that been your experience?
Was this you.
I think you alluded to that.
You said, you know, hey, it was.
It wasn't as easy after that.
But what's your experience been in terms of working with educational institutions and kind of getting paid?
Lindy Ledohowski (28:29.140)
Yeah.
So educational institutions.
And as you've alluded to, it's a really interesting industry because the people who experience the pain point.
So instructors who are teaching writing or have expectations of writing assignments, and the students themselves who are writing are not really the ones who pay.
They're not really the ones who make the budgeting decision.
And so it's quite odd in the sense that you can have teachers who immediately get it and go, oh, my gosh, I want this, and I want this for my students.
And the students can see it and go, oh, my gosh, this is going to change my life and all the rest.
But then somebody else is in charge of budget allocation in those buckets of money.
So we've and we've understood that from the get go.
It's been one of the kind of interesting dynamics that we've always known that our product speaks to those people who aren't the ones who pay.
And so we sort of knew that that was something that we had to navigate.
And so we've navigated it in a couple of different ways.
So firstly, price sensitivity is one of the key things that we identified and wanted to keep our price as low as possible, particularly in a bulk license context, so that it would fall within the budgetary envelope that many, say departments or teachers themselves would be able to access.
So to keep that price low so it's not something that needs to go through various different budgetary committees.
Was one way of addressing that.
Secondly was certainly by offering sort of a pilot or a free trial.
So get in, get teachers and students using SAJAC so that then when you have to go and make that budgetary argument or have that budgetary conversation with those who do manage the departmental or institution wide wallet, so to speak, that you've got real data from that institution.
So you can say, okay, not only does Essay Jack reduce writing anxiety and improve writing outcomes and all that at all of these other schools, but here's what's happening at your school.
And so that was another way of sort of partnering with the sort of teachers and students, the professors, and getting that buy in.
And then the third and probably the most successful way for us, because again, we're this teeny tiny Essay Jack that's run by some passionate educators who are sort of figuring things out along the way.
What we did very early on was partner with educational distributors.
So in Canada we have a distribution agreement and partnership with Nelson.
So Nelson is one of Canada's oldest and most sort of reputable textbook sellers.
That's what they originally made their, made their mark in.
And now of course, Nelson, like many other textbook sellers, have moved into the digital space.
But what they have is they've got a sales team across the country who already has the relationship equity and the contacts in all of the schools, colleges and universities.
And so if somebody's been selling, you know, a professor a textbook for 20 years and then this year they show up and say, okay, well how about instead of buying this writing textbook, you suggest Essay Jack to your students this year?
It was a much easier way in than we as sort of an unknown entity.
Once we had gone to sort of the end of the line with everybody we knew, we were able to sort of piggyback with those educational resellers and so we now have distribution partners in other regions and we're always looking for more.
So that's.
Again, we've got that kind of three ways.
One is to make sure that we're aware of price sensitivity, keep our prices low.
Two is to work with the institutions to help them navigate those budgetary cycles if need be, and work in a way that works for them.
And then three is to work with partners who know what they're doing.
Omer (32:32.630)
Okay.
And so currently, I think you have about 12,000 active users.
Lindy Ledohowski (32:37.910)
Yeah, that's right.
Omer (32:40.710)
And what I think is really fascinating here is that you built the product, you got it out there, and you started charging for it and getting paid before it was even possible to accept payments on your website.
Right?
Lindy Ledohowski (32:54.230)
Yes.
Omer (32:54.630)
So, lovely.
Lindy Ledohowski (32:55.830)
Yeah, I mean, that's.
And I can back up a bit.
So that early prototype developer, the sort of fellow who sort of had the growing pains with us, who made the alpha essay, Jack.
So that was.
We were.
I can back up at the time.
So we were in Malaysia at the time, while my husband was on sabbatical.
That was where that sort of early work was happening.
And then we were back in Canada to build what we envisioned to be this beta product on the back of all of the feedback we had, we had received from those early users and instructors.
And so we actually had that guy come and live in our guest room for four months.
And we worked with an outsourced development firm in Ottawa.
And so he.
And then this firm and I, he lived in our house.
He and I went to this firm 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, then came home, lived in the same house and everything like that through the build process of the SAJAC beta platform.
Then just before we went to launch in September 2015, there had been some delays.
As there always are in software developments, there are a few delays.
And at this point, he was basically sick of living in our guest room.
And he was like, okay, I'm out.
I'm going backpacking on the John Muir Trail in California.
I'm going dark.
I will not have WI FI access.
It's going to be me and a backpack.
And I thought, oh, my God.
So, of course, I had a bit of a breakdown, but we sort of found some.
Again, some sort of random tech guy just ultimately to just do a stripe integration.
Because we just thought, well, we have this product.
We've now had this experience where we've gone and demoed it at this one school and they're willing to write a check.
You know, there's this other school that we're now in the sales process with, and they're willing to write a check.
So if people are willing to write checks at the institutional level, and that's all great, we can invoice them and they can write checks.
But we also then need people to be able to come to the website and pay.
So we, again, as I say, we just sort of found some guy and we're like, hey, can you do a stripe integration so we can at least accept payment?
And that was, you know, while we already had the product in the market and we were sort of pretending as though it was good to go and everything was fantastic, when in fact, we had sort of no tech, no way of accepting payment, and we're just really kind of hanging on by the skin of our teeth.
Omer (35:25.520)
So let me be clear.
You took this guy who was in Malaysia.
Lindy Ledohowski (35:29.840)
Yeah, yeah.
Omer (35:30.680)
And got him to fly over and live in your house for four months to help you build his.
Lindy Ledohowski (35:35.280)
Yes.
I am not even kidding.
We had a guy living in from Malaysia.
We bought him a flight.
We put him in our guest room.
I was cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then working with him at this, you know, at this outsourced software development firm so that we could bring the vision of SA Jack to fruition.
Omer (35:57.900)
Wow.
Lindy Ledohowski (35:58.620)
And we're still friends.
We still, you know, we had dinner with him last time we were in Malaysia.
Malaysia.
So we haven't, you know, there have definitely been some, you know, tough moments along the way, but.
But he didn't kill us, and we didn't kill him.
Omer (36:12.510)
Okay, so you've got a product now, which is.
You've got a way to make money in terms of accepting payments.
You've kind of proved the concept.
There are kind of these educational institutions are willing to pay you and write checks.
I'm kind of curious, like, how did you go from the first 200 students to kind of go and test this thing to where you are now with 12,000 users?
Like, what did you do to market the business?
Lindy Ledohowski (36:45.940)
You know, I wish that I could say something really smart at this point and have a really fantastic sort of marketing plan and strategy, but that would be a lie.
We did more of what we had already been doing, which is we would go into classes, we would demo the product, and then after, say, doing a writing workshop or a demo in a university class, we would usually have about anywhere from 35 to 65% of the students who were in that class would then go and sign up and start paying for SAJAC themselves.
So again, that was sort of really encouraging in terms of seeing that we had a product that worked for students and they liked what they saw and they would sign up and.
And they would pay for it.
But there were sort of two hiccups with that.
One is, obviously, it's unsustainable.
There's only so many classes in the world you can go around and show your product to.
And the whole point of developing a software like SAJAC was that we wanted to be able to reach and help as many students as possible.
And so me running around kind of defeated that purpose.
The second problem, of course, is that as a researcher, I am always acutely aware of the kind of variables that can corrupt your data.
And so one of the things that we began to worry about is
Omer (38:05.850)
what
Lindy Ledohowski (38:06.130)
if what is successful is Lindy doing writing workshops?
And Essay Jack is just this kind of nifty teaching aid that helps her do what she's doing.
And Essay Jack itself isn't really what.
What people are being drawn to.
That started to be a bit of a question in that first sort of fall of 2015 that we.
We thought we needed to answer.
So we had applied for SAJAC to be considered for an English language teaching award in the Digital Innovation category run by the British Council in Cambridge English.
So they're kind of the world's leading experts on English language teaching and English language learning.
And so we thought, okay, well, let's.
Let's again, let's get some sort of peer review.
Let's see what other experts can think of this tool.
So the application for that award was quite involved.
We had to do a sort of written application.
What's the pedagogy behind the tool?
And then it went through.
And so we passed through that round and then it went to the next round where it was tested by a pool of sort of blind judges who just sort of went in and played with the product.
And so that.
So that was six months after launching that shaky beta product and sort of going into classes and doing workshops and having students sign on.
And again, we were getting, you know, probably about a hundred new users per month through that process.
Then by the spring of 2016, the British Council on Cambridge English named us as a finalist for this award.
So we're the only Canadian company that was a finalist.
The Eltons is what it's called, the Eltons Award for Digital Innovation.
And we were one of five companies in our category.
Sadly, we didn't win.
But even just being a finalist ended up getting us a lot of earned media and attention.
And so that again helped us to grow from sort of prototype testers of 200 to by the end of that first school year, 2015, 2016, I think we had something like 1200 students.
Again, slow growth, but that was sort of no marketing, that was word of mouth, that was kind of running around.
We still at that point considered ourselves to be building the product.
I mean we had, we were still bootstrapping.
We had, you know, no tech team, no marketing team, No, I was working for free and my co founder still had his full time job as a professor but we were already starting to get that earned media and getting buzz for a product that didn't yet exist in any other field.
And you know, we had not only invented a product, but we sort of invented a product category.
And so that itself got people quite intrigued.
Omer (40:42.230)
Let's talk about finances and money.
Revenue wise, I know you guys are doing over what, half a million a year?
Lindy Ledohowski (40:52.070)
Yeah, that's usually sort of where we land and a lot of that as well.
We've got, as I say, we've got some distribution partnerships and they have projected sales values and so we're not yet at the end of the, you know, at the end of the year to sort of know whether or not they hit their targets.
Omer (41:11.290)
And you bootstrapped the business for the first couple of years in terms of being self funded and I guess you raised, you did a friends and family round last year.
How much did you raise with that?
Lindy Ledohowski (41:24.410)
Yeah, so by, by 2017, you know, we had sort of over, I think it was 2500 users.
And we really at that point point knew much more about sort of tech, the technology and what we really wanted to build.
And so we had some of those legacy code issues from our early development that we were now in a position to remediate.
And so we actually finally got like UX and UI designers and feedback and technology.
So we thought, okay, this is the time to go to our friends and family and say, you know, these are the awards that we've been shortlisted for.
This is the user growth we've seen, this is, you know, the potential of the market.
Now let's give you the opportunity to participate and show your support.
And so in 2017 we raised 500,000 and the Lion's share of that went into essentially rebuilding the SAJAC platform.
So it's now entirely customizable, it looks new, it is robust, it is bug free, it is, you know, all of those things that we always wanted it to be.
And now we've got that.
Omer (42:28.470)
So beyond the overcoming the technical kind of learning curve and sort of all that comes with that, what else have been some of the big mistakes that you look back and some lessons you've learned from the experience.
Lindy Ledohowski (42:44.230)
So certainly, number one is, of course, that technical hurdle.
And I think that's a hurdle that we'll continue to work to overcome.
As I say, we now have great technical partner, but there are things that I wish I could do better from a technical perspective.
But the second and probably most important one, and we've sort of danced around it a bit in terms of talking about finances, but finances is really the biggest piece and the lesson that I wish I had learned.
I want to blame somebody else, but I have to own this one myself.
Which is when we first began and we started to try to see, okay, well, here's the product we're envisioning.
Once we have that prototype, you know, what's it going to cost?
What are some of the estimates?
And it was really hard to get somebody to pin down and really tell us what that was going to look like.
And so at the beginning, people were like, oh, okay, it's going to be, you know, $200,000, you know, four months, you can build this, whatever.
And then we thought, well, so we can run around and get investment at this point.
But, you know, then we're already diluted.
We're already, you know, we don't even yet know if anybody wants this product.
So, you know, perhaps that's.
That's a risk we can take on ourselves.
We'll invest in ourselves first, take on that risk.
And we did, and I'm happy that we did that.
But I think I would have started thinking about investment and the kinds of things that investors are looking for much earlier because I was really focused on let's build the best product.
And I think I had that kind of naive if we build it, they will come mentality.
And so I was like, let's get it right.
We want it validated.
We want the tests, we want the testimonials.
We want everybody to.
Who uses it to like it.
And we did all of that.
But then we weren't really focused on telling that story to an investor audience, sort of getting interest by those who would then share our vision.
And so now that we get to the point where we have all of these opportunities for growth.
Growth, and we don't have the capacity to pursue them all that we now have to run around and so say, oh, my gosh, now we've got to really start thinking about Courting investors.
And that's one thing that I wish we had started earlier.
So I would say to anybody who is listening this, who's starting a business, start thinking about that investment piece a lot earlier.
Omer (45:05.000)
How big is the team now?
Lindy Ledohowski (45:07.480)
So our actual SAJAC team is about four people.
And then we've got, because again, we've really focused on having the right partners and a lean team, our actual team.
So every Friday I send out an internal team update and that goes to over 30 people.
So that's our developers, our designers, our PR consultants, our tech team and anybody else who is working on Sajac also.
Now that includes a handful of our investors, friends and family investors.
Omer (45:41.760)
So if, if somebody's listening to this, they're non technical and they're kind of thinking about sort of a similar approach to kind of working with different companies or vendors to kind of supplement what they're doing.
What advice would you give them?
Like what, what do you look for now to make sure that you're partnering with the right people?
Lindy Ledohowski (46:03.840)
So the number one thing that we look for is the process.
So what is that process going to be?
So obviously if we're talking about technical design, but, or technical development, but this also works for design, you know, everybody will talk about, you know, agile process and then, but then you want to sort of really dig in and say, okay, so what does that look like?
So what is, you know, are you having weekly scrums?
What does that look like?
What do you talk about in your scrums?
If you're having daily standups, how do those work?
What do you talk about in your daily standups?
What project management tools are you using?
What are the expectations you have?
If you're using slack for communication, is that slack every day?
Is that slack every day at 9:00am?
You know, those kinds of process oriented questions will probably let you see whether or not the team that you're wanting to work with is going to work with you the way you need them to work or not.
And if you get that process ironed out well and again, you've got sort of third party software so you can, you know, have oversight as the, as the entrepreneur and you can sort of go in and see what people are doing on the various different platforms that are necessary to your business and you have transparency and the expectations are very clear, I think then it can work out really well.
So number one is get the process right, whatever that process is going to be for you and that is going to give you as the entrepreneur comfort that you have the information you need.
Two is the transparency piece so that there should be no questions about who's doing what and where and everybody needs to sort of be on the same page.
Three is certainly that openness of communication.
If you can communicate well together, then even if things go wrong, you'll probably be able to sort of pick up that ball and continue to run with it.
If somehow, for whatever the reason, and sometimes it's just different communication styles, whatever.
But if there's some sort of breakdown in the communication between the entrepreneur and the people he or she works with, then sometimes you just have to stop that relationship.
And because it's not, you're not going to be able to get it back on track.
Omer (48:04.250)
Great advice.
Love that.
Okay.
All right, let's get on to the lightning round.
It's I'm going to give you seven quick fire questions.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
You ready?
Lindy Ledohowski (48:13.850)
Alrighty.
Omer (48:15.050)
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Lindy Ledohowski (48:18.330)
Hire Slow fire Fast.
Omer (48:20.730)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Lindy Ledohowski (48:24.890)
Born to Run.
It is.
It focuses on how integral running is to brain development and sort of human thought process.
Omer (48:33.670)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Lindy Ledohowski (48:38.950)
Very thick skin and the ability to take feedback and not necessarily take it personally.
Omer (48:45.750)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Lindy Ledohowski (48:51.110)
So my favorite productivity tool is Slack.
I use that with all of our teams.
It allows for communication with teams to simultaneously.
I think it's really effective.
Much more effective than email.
Omer (49:03.550)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Lindy Ledohowski (49:08.110)
Well, if I told you, I'd have to kill you.
You know, I actually, I'd really love to start a school.
I have a number of different sort of school options that I'd like to start, whether it's a sports school, an academic girls school, a more sort of Greek style athletics and academic academy.
But I'd love to start a school.
Omer (49:30.580)
Cool.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Lindy Ledohowski (49:36.340)
So one thing that people may not know is that all of my siblings, all of our names start with L. Leah, Lindy, Lane, and Laurel.
And my dad's name is Leo.
Omer (49:48.420)
That's a lot of Ls.
Lindy Ledohowski (49:49.620)
It is.
Omer (49:51.770)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Lindy Ledohowski (49:55.370)
Reading and writing.
Hands down.
I read anywhere from sort of four to ten novels per week and I'm always writing academic articles, novels, you know, everything.
Wow.
Omer (50:08.730)
Lindy, thank you for joining me sharing the story of SA Jack.
It's been really interesting to kind of hear your kind of journey from, you know, being a research professor and a teacher into becoming a tech entrepreneur and and sort of what you've learned from that experience.
If people want to find out more about SA Jack, they can go to sajack.com that's essay as in ssay jack.com and if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Lindy Ledohowski (50:44.390)
So probably Twitter is the easiest.
So Dr. Lindy, that's also how you can get me on Instagram.
Those are some of the easiest ways if I don't know you, to just drop me a line.
Omer (50:55.950)
Great.
I'll include that in the show notes so people can get hold of those.
Great.
Well, thank you very much for joining me and I wish you all the best with SA Jack.
Lindy Ledohowski (51:07.150)
Thanks so much.
Omer.
This is really great to get to talk to you this afternoon.
Omer (51:11.230)
Cheers.
