Omer (00:11.840)
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.
This week's episode is a story about two college friends from the University of Waterloo in Canada who decided to build a startup.
They had an idea for a product that would make teachers more productive.
They didn't do any validation or even talk to teachers.
They just went ahead and built the product on a hunch.
As you can imagine, things didn't go quite today to plan when they launched.
And we talk about the lessons they learned and how they got to where they are today.
With over 100,000 teachers worldwide using their product and also having raised $500,000 in their initial seed round.
We also talk about how they were discouraged because nobody was buying their product.
And then one phone call changed all that and created that aha moment where they figured out how to get teachers who don't have a lot of money using their product and still create a business model where they can make money.
So some interesting lessons and I think you'll get value from this whatever industry you're in.
All right, today's guest is the co founder and CTO of Chalk.com, a SaaS product that helps teachers with lesson planning, grading, assessment and attendance.
Over 100,000 teachers worldwide are using chalk.com the company is based in Toronto, Canada.
It was founded in 2012 and to date has raised 500,000 in its initial seed round.
So today I'd like to welcome Ryan McKay Fleming.
Ryan, welcome.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (02:07.150)
Thanks for inviting me.
Omer (02:08.430)
Cool.
It's great to have you here.
Now, one of the first things I like to ask people when they join me here is what drives them.
So what is it for you?
What gets you out of bed to do what you do every day with this business?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (02:23.210)
You know, I was thinking about this.
Probably the biggest thing is actually just the team showing up to work today.
It's just fantastic seeing the enthusiasm of everybody else who works here and not only that, just the teachers who use the platform.
And we get wonderful, wonderful praise from them that we're helping them, which for them is apparently, I guess, sort of rare to find things that actually help them save so much time.
Omer (02:50.340)
Cool.
So you and William, your co founder, founded this business in 2012.
How did you guys come up with the idea for this business?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (03:01.380)
Ah, long interesting story.
So it started actually with William.
We were in sort of first year university.
He went back to his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia.
And he was talking with some of his previous high school teachers, and he was there after work.
And what he found was that these teachers are doing like, an incredible amount of work after the bell.
You know, a lot of people sort of have the impression that as a teacher, you get like two months off every summer, and then you get like March break and all these Christmas vacations, and you only work from like 8 Till Street.
But that's entirely not the case.
They get in 6, 7 o' clock in the morning, and they leave about 5 or 6 in between intramurals, marking and grading and all that kind of stuff.
So he's sort of like, okay, well, they're here so long, maybe there's some way we can actually help them save time.
And so the first idea he had was building a lesson planner to help them manage their lesson content and save time in that aspect of their lives and maybe go from there Later.
A couple months later, he talked to me about the business and he's like, hey, you want to do something?
And I'm like, okay, sure.
And that's pretty much how I got into it.
And then sort of that sort of went on and on and on.
We built the first version of the product over summer, literally at my kitchen table.
And then from there we met our other co founder, Sraj Srinivas, who handles the sales side of stuff.
Omer (04:36.240)
Cool.
So you guys.
So you had this idea, you and William started to build the product.
Were you guys thinking of it as a business at the time, or was it more just like you kind of saw an opportunity to build something, and it was more about the process of actually trying to build a solution that was driving you guys.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (05:00.400)
It's actually kind of crazy.
We were very naive.
Being like first year university, we're like, okay, we're going to build this to make like a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue, like, by the end of the year, and then we'll move on to something else.
And at the time, we didn't even necessarily think about doing just education.
We were looking into other things.
But as sort of time went on, we realized that there's actually a lot of stuff to do in education.
And between all of the feedback we got from teachers, they really, really needed the help.
Omer (05:31.500)
Okay, so tell me a little bit about what the first version of the product looked like, because from what I understand today, it's a suite of products that help teachers with different aspects of what they do.
But what was the specific problem that you decided to solve?
Initially and sort of how did that product look?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (05:53.419)
So the first product that we released was Plan Board, and that's still sort of our primary focus.
We focus a lot on lesson planning.
So teachers, every day, they'll have a number of specific classes and they're required to sort of plan their lesson.
What are they going to teach those kids during that day?
And more specifically, how does that align with curriculum expectations and standards?
So the first version of the product was literally just sort of a timetable where you can enter, I have math class now.
I'm going to teach them, like, show them this video.
And then it aligns to saying, can they add these two numbers together?
Or something like that.
And it's very, very, very simple.
Sort of day planner.
Many teachers actually, they'll have a paper planner that they use for this.
But being able to track the standards content and even just using it as a presentation tool for videos and stuff like that was really interesting to them.
That's sort of where this went from.
We spent a lot of time with Lamp Board and it took us a while before we actually started to do stuff with the assessments and that kind of thing.
Omer (06:54.480)
Did you or William do any kind of validation?
Did you do the Lean Startup stuff?
Did you go and interview teachers?
Did you do any of that stuff before you started building?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (07:06.440)
You know, I don't think we really did.
And looking back on this, it was sort of.
We almost like shot ourselves in the foot and we didn't know about it because we sort of.
We had these designs for what we thought would work and we built it.
And we didn't actually really ask anybody if that was really what they wanted.
And we're just sort of fixing a lot of that now.
And so William actually had a startup previous to this where he built this company called Draft Board.
It was for doing, like, mockups and interfacing with, like, clients because he had a web design studio.
So this wasn't his first, like, lay around the Mario run, I would set high guess I would say.
But even then, like, he was sort of into the startup scene, but he.
We didn't really realize, like what we're doing wrong until later.
Does that make sense?
Omer (08:06.000)
Yeah.
Yeah.
So give me, give me one example of that.
So I assume it was something that you designed in the product or thought that it should work in a certain way.
And then once you actually got it in front of your customers, you realized, oh no, it's completely different to.
The reality is completely different to what we thought, I guess.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (08:27.060)
Yeah.
So we essentially designed it Almost on a hunch, we're like, yeah, this is probably what they want.
And we built it before actually trying the designs and testing them around.
And we're actually, we sort of fixed that.
Now we actually talk a lot with the teachers sort of figuring out what they're going to do.
And one of the things we actually realized with the product was that teachers use it almost for two different things.
So there's, there's two types of planning.
There's lesson planning and then there's sort of day planning.
And planningboard sort of did both of them, not amazingly.
The day planning piece would be just like, I'm a teacher, I have these specific classes and I want to keep like some notes about, oh yeah, like make sure to hand out this test or something like that.
It's almost like a more glorified calendar.
And then on the other side you have lesson planning, which is very much full form.
A lot of school districts will actually tell you exactly what you need to do as part of your lesson plan.
They'll give you a template that you have to fill out.
And then a lot of them, they want to do this before actually scheduling it into their day to day flow.
And we've just sort of realized that sort of over the past year or so as we've been talking to clients about like, oh yeah, this was completely foreign to us, that they'd actually have to do this very, very full, structured thing.
Omer (09:46.050)
Got it.
Okay, so you've built the first version of the product back in 2012.
What did you guys have to do to get your first customer?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (10:00.950)
So we were at the University of Waterloo and the University of Waterloo has a startup accelerator program called Velocity and as part of that they have something called the Velocity Venture Fund.
I think it might have changed its name since, but you could go in, there was a bunch of like different startups from the university and then you'd pitch for this competition, right?
This is pitch competition and we just happen to win that.
But as part of that, since it was a pitch pump like competition in public, one of our first users was in the audience, which seems bizarre.
Just some random teacher happened to be at the university watching these startups.
And that actually user, he is actually a very important advisor to us now because he actually does a lot of stuff like the, he's part of our education advisory board, sort of like, okay, where is education going?
How can we help get there?
Right.
But it's just sort of that weird circumstance that you have find somebody like that.
And going further than that when we actually first released the product, we charged teachers for it.
It was like $30 per teacher for a year.
And we did that for a good year.
And we didn't exactly have the adoption that we wanted.
I think by the end of the year we had like maybe $3,000 or something like that.
So you can't run a business on that.
So we ended up making the decision to make the product itself free for teachers.
And that sort of was a bit of a jumping off point because a lot of teachers, they just, they don't actually have a lot of money, especially in the United States, they don't get paid quite a lot.
So they have to pay for all this stuff out of pocket.
And having a free tool was actually sort of where we started to see growth pick up because now a bunch of people who wouldn't have actually looked at it or even considered it are now actually sort of using it.
Omer (12:08.920)
So that's interesting.
And I think that was one of the things that I was going to ask you about.
I wasn't quite clear whether you were charging them or it was because I know on your homepage it says it's free or whether it was some sort of trial that eventually led to some kind of freemium model or something like that.
So you're not charging these guys.
So what is the business model that you guys are trying to build here?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (12:34.510)
Yeah, so this is where it gets really Funky.
So in 2012, around the end of the year, we were all sort of discouraged because nobody was really buying it.
And.
But randomly Will and I, we were in a computer science class and we got a ping saying from somebody because we had live chat and they're saying we want to buy.
It was like 72 licenses within 24 hours.
And we're like, okay, this guy's.
They're obviously trolling us, like this can't be true.
But it really was.
What it turned out to be was this.
It was a school in Texas and a teacher had found the application and then suggested it for their entire, like their entire school.
And then they reached out to us randomly.
So that was sort of like the aha moment.
We were like, huh?
Yeah, maybe we should charge people who have money.
And so that's where we are now.
We actually provide premium offering for schools and school districts because they have other problems apart from just the day to day lesson planning stuff.
They want to track their curriculum, they want to see how their teachers are doing, how their students are doing.
And that's sort of where we actually make a lot of that's where all of our revenue is from.
Omer (13:55.180)
Oh, I see.
So if it's.
If it's a teacher, as an individual who wants to use chalk.com, they can just come and sign up and not pay anything.
But if a school wants to use it across all of their teachers and wants to have some additional features, then you're basically delivering a paid version of that product to them.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (14:22.300)
Yeah, that's correct.
The big thing we saw right now is actually collaboration on the district sale, so letting teachers work together, share lesson plans and assessments and that kind of stuff.
Omer (14:32.440)
Okay, so you've got this.
This random call out of the blue.
You realize that it's not some.
Somebody trolling.
It's.
It's a legit school that has this requirement.
So what happened then?
So you said that you were kind of.
You two were sort of didn't feel that you were getting traction in 2012.
Did this give you some renewed energy and motivation to sort of try and push harder?
And was this sort of like an important turning point when you look back?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (15:09.490)
Yeah, absolutely.
Because we realized, like, okay, well, this could actually be a natural business.
And as it so happens, in 2013, Will and I, wear.
Dropped out of school and took those on full time.
So actually making revenue was sort of a big deal.
We actually raised our seat earlier this year.
So for that entire time, we paid ourselves both in the form of, like, grants and that VPF that we've won, but also with revenue.
So we're actually paying ourselves, which was kind of cool.
Omer (15:45.270)
Okay, cool.
So you.
Okay, right.
So because you had.
You sort of figured out how to start charging schools, you were bringing in some revenue, what kind of marketing were you doing?
What kind of channels were working for you guys?
Were you.
Was this mostly around content marketing?
Were you reaching out, doing outreach to schools through phone or email?
How were you getting the word out?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (16:11.710)
So at least for the free teachers, we actually didn't do any sort of advertising.
All of our girls has been word of mouth.
We've done a little bit more recently, but back then it was all entirely word of mouth.
As for the school districts, that was all just like Siraj, like hustling, going to conferences, meeting random people and closing deals.
It's a lot more structured now, but that's sort of what it takes.
In the early days, I guess you
Omer (16:37.960)
go into 2013, at the start of the year, had you brought any more schools on, or you were sort of still working with this first.
First school from Texas.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (16:48.390)
There was that first one.
And I think in that spring, we closed another much bigger one.
Omer (16:53.710)
Okay, so here's what I'm interested to know.
So you guys said you didn't do any sort of validation or customer development stuff.
And I think that that's a really good point because, you know, sometimes I think that there's so much value and wisdom in sort of the whole lean startup methodology, but it's not the silver bullet.
Right?
It's not going to guarantee you success if you do that.
And I think that you guys are also great examples of there are still companies growing and succeeding even if they don't do those things.
So you have to kind of take what you learn with a pinch of salt and just apply it in the right context for whatever situation you're in.
But I'm interested to know, because you didn't do that stuff, you guys built the product and then you brought on this school.
Did you have these kind of moments where you just went, oh, shoot, the product doesn't do what our customer or customers want it to do?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (17:58.470)
Yeah, definitely.
I think it was sort of discouraging for us as well, going to different places and finding out that school districts, they all have different sort of requirements or things that they want to solve at that moment.
Right.
And you have to hit a lot of them to determine sort of what is the.
What is it they're looking for.
Many of them, they're not necessarily looking for curriculum management.
Everybody has a specific problem they want to solve at that specific time, and then there's so many specific problems that need to be solved.
You just sort of have to choose one and then go with it and then go from there.
So we do curriculum management right now.
And that was sort of an aha for us at the beginning of the year when we found out there was large charter schools who were looking to make sure that their curriculum was managed properly because they had to report back to their chartering body and that kind of thing.
But that's not the only thing.
We've also determined that a lot of boards are looking to handle assessment, and that's sort of our next step for outbound sales.
There's just so many different things and there's so many.
Like all these districts, they all have very widely different problems, but they all don't try to solve everything all at once.
And that was sort of an interesting tidbit to learn.
Omer (19:07.470)
Do you have a lot of schools outside of the US Using your product?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (19:14.110)
The majority of our bases in the United States, we have a few in Canada, we have a few in the uk and I'm sure I'm missing other ones.
Omer (19:25.310)
Okay, you've got the, the product, you're starting to get customers, you've kind of sort of figured out a business model and you guys are able to start paying each other at least a certain amount to sort of keep going.
I Guess Sometime around 2014, you guys started thinking about raising some funding.
I guess.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (19:49.130)
Yeah.
Omer (19:50.730)
Had you, had you, had you or William ever done that before?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (19:54.890)
No.
And it was pretty incredible to think like, oh yeah, well we're paying all these people, but like, how do we take this to the next level?
And we just sort of realized that maybe it'd be kind of hard to just bootstrap this.
So we started looking for outside funding.
Because one thing you'll learn in education is that the sales cycles are stupidly long and they're seasonal, which is even worse.
So just getting to that next point and just being able to get the next round of customers, you actually have to wait sort of a while before they actually will close.
And if you're just doing this one entirely on revenue, it can be quite difficult.
So you need that sort of like buffer, right?
Omer (20:36.410)
Yeah, because I guess they're going to think, you know, in school years and then there's going to be some time before that where they've got to get a budget approved and before that they're going to have to think about what they need and submit those requirements.
So I don't know what is a typical cycle look like to close a sale with a school?
How long are we talking about?
Months?
Years?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (21:00.000)
Oh yeah, it's in the months.
Thankfully it's not years, but it's in the months.
For bigger districts it's probably in the years.
We're just sort of the biggest ones we have are probably medium size at this point.
But I mean you can sort of buffer it out a bit if you were selling in like Australia or something because they have slightly different time frames.
You can get a little bit of revenue in between, but for the most part everybody just does spring.
That's when everything like happens and you just start the conversations in the fall.
Omer (21:29.990)
So I'm curious about one thing because I had Pete Kohman, the co founder of Optimizely, on the show a while back.
He mentioned a previous startup that he and Dan Siroker had tried to build before Optimizely called Carrot Sticks.
And this was like an online math education site for kids.
And the business never really took off, it was never profitable.
And even though they kept it running for years.
They eventually decided to shut it down.
And when I asked Pete about why he thought that business had failed, he.
He said, you know, they weren't the target customer.
They weren't trying to solve a, you know, their own itch.
They weren't parents, they weren't teachers, and it was just a space that they didn't have a deep enough understanding to.
To be successful.
Whereas when they then went on to launch Optimizely, based on some of the work that Dan had been doing with the Obama campaign and so on, it was.
It was a lot easier to.
To get traction and build that business.
So just kind of thinking about that.
I'm curious why.
I mean, you guys aren't teachers.
Obviously you've been students at one time or another.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (22:55.590)
Yeah.
Omer (22:56.790)
How.
How has that been for you?
Do you think that that's made it harder for you?
And also kind of thinking about William and you mentioned his previous startup, you say it was draft board.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (23:10.710)
Yeah.
Omer (23:11.070)
Is that what it's called?
So if, you know, sort of using a tool like that when you have a design agency, that makes sense because you're kind of scratching your own itch.
But this seemed like an area sort of maybe going outside of your comfort zones and areas of expertise.
Did you guys feel that that's been a difficult learning curve for you?
Is that something you would recommend to people?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (23:36.570)
Interesting question.
Yeah.
So we're definitely not teachers and we've had to, like, there's so much domain knowledge that you have to learn.
Right.
And I'm still learning about like all these, all this terminology and everything that they have to do.
Made worse by the fact that it seems like every state has different words for the same thing, but it's definitely easier to build something for yourself.
But what an interesting insight is, is that there are so many industries and problems out there that need to be solved that the people in them, they don't really have the tools to do.
So there's not many former educators who are programmers.
And I hope I'm not offending anybody who's in the audience who might be, but we just haven't experienced, seen anybody who's been like a teacher and then built a tool for other teachers.
So there's an obvious need there.
They're looking for things.
They just.
It was like it's giving water to somebody in a desert.
So it's a really great thing to do as a business is finding a problem that needs to be solved and it isn't currently being solved.
And if it happens to be something that you experience that makes it easier because you don't have to get the domain knowledge.
But even if there is something that exists, that's a great opportunity to take.
Omer (24:57.190)
So earlier you mentioned that your first customer was somebody who was in the audience when you guys were.
Were sort of pitching the business.
And did he play.
He or she play a role in helping you guys understand the business of the industry?
I mean, how were you building this knowledge?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (25:21.120)
Yeah, he was a good start because he was a teacher.
Like, that was good insight for the product specifically.
But in that first year, we also reached out with professors in the field of education, and we sort of built this network around us of interesting people and people who knew the industry, both from the people, like professors teaching, new teachers, current teachers, people who work in the district, people who work in, like, ministries and departments of education, that kind of thing.
So you get the, like, full picture of, like, what's going on.
And if you're doing something, a business where you don't have that many knowledge, it's, yes, you're gonna need to find people who know what's happening and then help solve their problems.
Right?
Omer (26:09.240)
Yeah.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (26:09.680)
Okay.
Omer (26:10.160)
You know, I have.
I have some listeners who always tell me, hey, you should talk more about the technology that you know, because we all spend a lot of time talking about the idea and the validation and getting traction and the lessons.
But, you know, and now we've got the CTO on.
So just kind of in a nutshell, you know, tell me a little bit about your tech stack.
What's Chalk.com built on?
What are the technologies that you guys use?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (26:38.030)
So we're Ruby on Rails, and we have been since inception, sort of randomly, because when Will first came to me, he's like, hey, have you done any web programming?
And I'm like, no, but I just bought a book on Ruby on Rails, and that was literally the inception.
But we've gone along since then.
We're still on Ruby on Rails, and then we've sort of introduced React for our front end, and that's been particularly great.
When you're a small startup, it helps to have something that's sort of tried and true, especially for most businesses where you're not doing necessarily, like, groundbreaking new stuff.
Like most everything, it's like a crud app, right?
So you want to pick something that's solid, where you can.
There's a huge user base where you can help find people who've had the same problem sort of deal.
And it makes it easier to scale and makes it easier to find People who know how to do it as well.
Right.
I feel bad for people who just like, choose some random new experimental technology and try to build a startup on it.
Like the startup.
You have so many problems.
Last thing you want is to have problems with the product that are sort of outside of your control.
Right?
Omer (27:47.800)
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess it probably makes hiring easier as well if you want to bring on.
Hire more engineers and things like that.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (27:59.170)
Yeah, and it's more than that.
One of the reasons we're on React as well is like Rails and the two of them.
It makes it easy to build product and makes it easy to implement new features.
We were briefly using Backbone js and at a certain point, the application got so large and it became a real hassle just to add new things.
And so far, like, with our switch to React, we have.
The entire product has been rewritten in it and our velocity still is really, really high.
So choosing something that you can be productive in is also incredibly important because as a startup, you have to do things really, really quickly.
Right.
Omer (28:36.750)
So I'm not familiar with React or haven't used it.
Is there an example you can give us of like, something that you have, you know, something that you're using it for or something that's.
That's easier to do now than maybe it was with other JS libraries?
Yeah.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (28:54.020)
Well, the biggest difference for.
So we previously were on Backbone and it just how it happened.
Like, say I wanted to insert like a button or something.
Maybe we weren't doing it right, but we'd have to add a reference to the view, which is what gets rendered.
You'd have to link it to the code that gets called for when you hit that button or something like that.
And then you have to write the code for that button.
React just gets rid of that and streamlines a lot of it so that your.
The view code is like, right there.
So it's like, very simple to see, okay, well, what's actually being shown on screen.
And then where is this reference?
Like, okay, when I click it.
Oh, I see.
That's that function that's called.
I don't have to, like, follow all these bloody breadcrumbs to find out what's happening.
And it's made it really easy.
So I just want to be.
Okay, I want to insert like this new button to do this random task.
It's like, boom, boom, boom, done.
Instead of having to jump through a million different files to add it, I'm gonna.
Omer (29:45.740)
I'm gonna have to make some time to play around with that myself.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (29:48.980)
So I would suggest it's interesting.
Omer (29:50.780)
Good tip.
So looking back at this journey that you've taken in, in building this business, is there one thing that if you could kind of go back and sort of tell yourself when you started on this journey that you wish you had known when you started out, what would that be?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (30:11.500)
Yeah, if I'd known how long it would take to do things in education and how long it would take to get to this point, I don't know if I would have jumped on board, but I think it's been worth it.
That's sort of an interesting side note, is one thing I've just sort of realized is that advice and knowledge finds you sort of when you need it.
We sort of rejiggered our entire sales process like this year, and we'd done it by finding all this information about how to do it.
But the thing is that information was there like from the beginning, but you just had no idea that existed.
And then had somebody shown it to us, we probably wouldn't have understanded what was important about it.
So those problems, they'll come up to you as like, oh, it's like obvious.
Why haven't you been doing this from the beginning when somebody could have told us that like three years ago?
But I don't think we would have really understood the gravity of like how important that why is.
Omer (31:04.440)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I came across this term a while back called Just in Time Learning.
And I think that that's kind of really valuable in terms of, you know, whether you're learning a new programming language or whether you're doing, you know, building a business.
There is so much you can learn.
And if you are sort of a learning oriented person, which I am, you can kind of end up wasting a huge amount of time learning things that you don't need to know right now that you're not going to go and implement right now, you're not going to use right now and you completely blind
Ryan McKay-Fleming (31:46.100)
to the things that you actually need.
Omer (31:47.620)
Yeah, yeah.
So I think just let's kind of focus on, try to do this just in time learning.
Think about what you can execute on.
Set yourself a very sort of a finite amount of time to learn a very specific thing and then spend more time going and executing on it, learning and then kind of, you know, using that sort of rinse and repeat kind of approach.
Okay, cool.
So how big is the size of the team these days?
How many people do you have working there?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (32:18.710)
I think we're over, over 10 something.
I've lost count.
Omer (32:22.150)
Are you guys still hiring?
Do you have open positions?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (32:25.830)
Not at the moment.
Probably next year, though.
Omer (32:28.200)
Okay, cool.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (32:29.240)
Well, I mean, we're always hiring if we find cool people.
Omer (32:32.360)
Yeah.
Yeah, you could always.
Yeah.
Is there something that sort of one part of the business that you're most excited about, that you can talk about and what's next for Chalk?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (32:44.200)
Yeah, actually, it was really fantastic.
So we sort of mapped out our product direction for, like, the next year or so.
And chalk.com started out as, like, a productivity suite.
Right.
But going forward, we sort of want to be sort of a personal assistant for teachers because they have so many things they need to do, like how do we highlight the important things?
So we really want to look into how do we determine sort of, like, where our students fall behind and sort of highlight that to the teachers or even say, oh, well, this specific lesson plan that you planned, the students actually didn't do so well on that.
And then you can sort of tie back to saying, okay, maybe for next year when you redo this, try something different and see if that actually helps.
So that's sort of in continuous improvement and then helping highlight things that they need to do to improve other jobs.
Right.
Omer (33:36.830)
Do you solve any scenarios for parents in that picture?
I mean, because when you said that, I was like, God, I'd love to know more when one of my kids is struggling with something at school.
Rather than finding out when I see a grade or when I go to a parent teacher conference, if I kind of knew earlier and I had some signs of.
Of maybe somebody's, you know, struggling at something, then maybe I can do something more to help with that as well.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (34:06.600)
Yeah, we actually have plans for that.
And it's sort of an interesting problem because teach, like parents, they really want an insight into what's going on in the classroom.
Right.
But teachers want to sort of control that conversation because they don't want to be hounded by parents all the time, like, oh, has my kid got a bad mark on this random assignment?
It becomes more work for them.
So part of it is, like, how do you let teachers get insight into the classroom while also sort of maintaining sort of almost like office hours or something like that, where they can get an insight without overwhelming the teacher with feedback.
So, yeah, we're definitely thinking about it.
Omer (34:41.979)
See that?
That's a really, really good point there.
Right?
Because for somebody like me who doesn't understand that space as well as you do, I can come up with ideas like this, which, on the face of it, sound like great Ideas.
But as you just explained, when you sort of look at the nuances of what a teacher has to struggle with and deal with, they're probably not going to use your product if you open it up too much to people like me as a parent, because it's probably not going to make them more productive.
It's going to probably waste more of their time.
Yeah.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (35:21.070)
You realize it's like, wow, it's like a great idea, but then it's like the person who would use it, they hate it.
So like, oh, okay.
Well, I didn't realize that.
Yeah.
Omer (35:29.630)
Cool.
All right, it's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I like to answer them as quickly as you can.
You ready?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (35:38.870)
Sure.
Omer (35:40.070)
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (35:46.470)
You know, I haven't like, I was thinking about this earlier today and I couldn't come up with one.
And that's when I sort of started thinking about the advice.
Sort of finds you when you need it.
And if I were to tell you something now, the advice I would give you maybe a year from now is completely different or even a year back.
Right.
So I don't actually have any current advice that I could think of.
Omer (36:07.140)
Okay, well, your advice is get advice when you need it at the right time.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (36:12.340)
Yeah.
Omer (36:14.660)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (36:18.899)
Oh, man.
Right now I'm currently reading the Elon Musk biography.
If anything, it gives you perspective about how hard things could be.
At least the software I'm writing doesn't cause things to physically explode.
Yeah,
Omer (36:35.140)
love that.
And what's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (36:42.900)
One word.
Hunger.
Omer (36:44.580)
Hunger.
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (36:51.540)
Right now I use a lot of Trello.
Just visually seeing, like the progress of like, things that are in like, what do you need to do this week?
And then how, like, what are you working on right now?
It's much better than like a list because previously I'd used Asana, but things just get lost.
Yeah, it's like, nice.
Omer (37:10.940)
Yeah.
I love Trello.
I'm a big fan of Trello.
I had Michael Pryor on the show a while back and you know, every time I talk to somebody who is maybe struggling trying to organize things and maybe they're kind of using more of like a list based product that isn't working for them.
You know, I just had people who didn't know about Trello and when they discover it, they're just like in love with it.
Right.
Because there's just something about it that it doesn't take a lot of time to learn.
It's.
The visual piece of it is really good for certain types of people.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (37:45.860)
They're like digital stickiness.
Yeah.
There's another way that you can do.
I have a lot of those on the wall as well.
Omer (37:53.430)
All right, What's a new business idea or a crazy idea that you have in your head that you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (38:03.670)
Oh, man.
See, I don't know.
If this didn't work out, I'd probably give enough education another shot at this point, but I haven't really been thinking of anything interesting.
Well, I mean, there's lots of big things I'd love to do.
Electric car company, Elon Musk, you know, that'd be pretty cool.
Omer (38:22.780)
Yeah.
Well, maybe.
I think right now we could probably do with slightly more affordable alternatives to Tesla.
So there you go.
Maybe that's the opportunity.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (38:31.980)
There you go.
Omer (38:34.380)
All right.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (38:40.060)
One thing you all know about me is like, is as long as the more you get to know me, the more you'll realize that I'm like a walking Wikipedia.
Know a lot of random crap.
Omer (38:49.720)
Tell me something.
Oh, man.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (38:52.320)
I don't only have to.
You'd have.
I can never pull it out randomly.
It has to be in sort of a random conversation in a context of a conversation.
Yeah.
It's only contextually accessed.
Omer (39:03.400)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (39:08.120)
Reading.
I read a lot and I recommend it if you like it.
Omer (39:15.690)
Cool.
All right, Ryan, thanks.
It's been a pleasure.
Now, if folks want to find out more about chalk, they can go to chalk.com and if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Ryan McKay-Fleming (39:32.490)
Ryanchalk.com Cool.
Just my name@chalk.com.
Omer (39:38.810)
awesome.
Thanks, man.
I wish you all the best and thank.
Thanks for joining me today.
Ryan McKay-Fleming (39:44.680)
Yeah, thank you.
