Month #1

Having started as a VC, it’s interesting to look at my startup from the other side of the table, and see whether or not I would fund it. It’s a different perspective from the one I have usually, as a founder.

On the other hand, our team is creating a crazy amount of information whilst applying to accelerators/grants etc. Given the time we spend on them, we wanted somewhere to dump them, and wring every last bit of use out of them.

This series, then, has 3 aims.

• 1) It is an attempt to reconcile founder-me’s overwhelming love and VC-me’s caution.
• 2) It is an attempt to keep a record of and make use of, the documents we are using to get money.
• 3) To a certain extent, we hope that this process proves helpful to other startups.

Before we kick off with any (meagre) analysis, let’s get this right.

1. No hype — the team is committed work hard to earn the trust of our users and our investors, and earn our valuations.
2. No lies — we are as transparent as will be possible on the worldwide web.
3. No disrespect — we want to be the most respectful, nicest guys out here.

KPIs

• 16 students registered, from a class of 23
• Of whom 4 are very heavy users — they respond proactively with feedback
• 2 student have already requested more subjects
• Scale of how likely one would be to recommend to friends, with 10 as most likely — 1 person rated a 9, 3 rated an 8, 1 rated a 4

Analysis

Current statistics underestimate our product. There are 3 reasons why the students we are running this trial with should engage with our product less than the typical user.

• These students we are testing in are in Y10 and will take the exams in Y11, do not have mocks of exams. They are not thus particularly driven to use revision platforms.
• These students are also more scientifically inclined — we introduced to the triple science classes. → These students are thus less likely to need our product, as science is their strong suit.
• Our product only has one subject—our product holds enough value to see users return, despite only hosting material on 1 out of the 10 subjects they are studying.

Additionally, when we look at the cohort —

• 23 introduced to product
• → 16 registered
• → 9 WAU (week #1)
• → 6 WAU (week #2)

the retention is quite satisfactory. It’s on par, if not higher, then early Duolingo metrics. Most interestingly, we have some resurrected users — that start using the platform after being inactive.

Most interestingly, our biggest roadblock is a very easy fix. It’s the lack of subjects. That’s something we can and will build on, once we get more funding (wink, wink).

“We like the concept, but there’s just not enough subjects”

We’re on the right track, iterating towards product-market fit, and the current biggest issues are easily fixable.

TL;DR —We’re a great pre-seed bet.‍😉