Raph: Hey folks, and welcome to the latest episode of the small tech podcast.
We have another amazing guest today.
She has been a teacher for many years.
She was also the head of product at Simbi and is a founder
member of Parenthood Ventures.
And is co founder and CEO of Questread, an engaging reading game that increases
motivation and achievement for elementary aged children, which just got accepted,
into Ocean Programs Accelerator Cohort 10.
She is Janessa Ferrell.
How are you, Janessa?
Janessa: Hey Raph, I'm doing well.
Thank you.
It's great to be here.
Raph: Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you.
For context we both were at Simbi, so I did some work with Simbi a few years ago,
as did Janessa, and that was a reading platform, and Simbi is no, no more, and
Janessa has gone on to build another reading platform and so I'm curious to
learn Like, how did you end up at Simbi?
I feel like I might know a little bit about that, but not a whole lot.
So what was your journey from educator, from teacher into this tech world?
Janessa: Yeah.
It was quite the experience actually.
So I spent most of my career, about 15 years or so teaching elementary school
in various classrooms as a reading teacher in Title I schools in Chicago.
Especially on kids that didn't like reading and were
not reading at grade level.
And so when I was working with these kids, I would see all sorts of issues with them,
and one of the worst issues that I saw was that they were unmotivated to read.
And if you're not motivated to do something, you don't succeed in it.
And the research backs is up every time.
I would try everything.
I would get them to record on their device and read books out
loud and listen back to them.
I would play little games.
I would motivate them with rewards and do all these things in my classroom.
And I saw that they really responded well to this.
So what I decided then was, okay, I got to build an app that helps every child
do this, because I can't possibly do this, even for all the kids in my class
and an app could really spread and scale what I was doing, what was working well.
So I decided, okay, I'm going to go learn about learning technologies
and get my graduate degree.
And so I applied to University of Austin, got accepted and everything was great.
And I was like, all right, I'm going to go on this journey.
And then the pandemic happened and that door closed for me for good because I
was in Canada and couldn't go down there.
And so I reached out to several companies that were doing the work that
I wanted to learn how to do in tech.
And I volunteered to work with them on the job to do an unpaid internship.
intership And so Simbi was one of those folks.
So I talked to the founders of Simbi.
And offered to work with them and they accepted and I learned on the job.
I started taking night classes and product management with product school.
I worked with the technical team there and learned the skills I needed to learn.
And then I grew into that role and eventually became head
of product there at Simbi.
And so that was like a moment where I learned, okay, if you're just
really focused on what you want to learn and are willing to do what it
takes, then reach out to it, then.
Then you can get there.
Raph: Amazing.
That transition from, the classroom into the tech world.
What was like, what was the most surprising or weird or yeah.
Janessa: really funny to think back on it right now.
I'm married to a software developer too.
So he was working remotely for a company at the same time.
And so I'd be like at my desk and I'd be like asking all these random
acronyms I'm like, what's a KPI?
What are they talking about?
Or like even learning how to use Slack, right?
And I was like, how does this work?
It's, there's a lot of tech language that isn't common to people outside
of tech, and I had to learn that all very quickly and looking back now it's
really funny to think about the things that I just didn't even know how to do.
Raph: Yeah, that's funny.
Like I, so I've been watching a show we just started a couple of days ago,
I think called Abbott Elementary.
Is that, have you
Janessa: Oh yeah, I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard it's good.
Raph: Yeah.
And it's just really funny to me sometimes to think about like the things that,
you know, As a kid, you go through school, but you don't really know
what the teachers are going through.
Janessa: Yeah,
Raph: And yeah, there's just like such a difference in like these different
worlds that we all inhabit and I guess move through as we move on in our
careers or change careers or whatever.
I feel like Slack and AWS and KPIs are so natural to me.
Janessa: What's funny too, is that what I learned is that having a range
of skills like is really important.
So the things that I was learning as a teacher actually came in handy.
So I led a R& D team, and there was people from a lot
of different backgrounds.
And it was really interesting to see like, I ran like a weekend with that
team in Vancouver a couple years ago.
And.
I found myself leading them through these activities that were really similar to the
things that I would have been doing in my classroom, actually, and trying to promote
engagement and communication and all these things were very well aligned, actually.
Raph: Actually literally my next question is is there anything that like any skills
that you learned as a teacher that have helped you navigate the tech world?
So yeah.
Janessa: The other one is really pitching, it's pitching and
teaching are so much alike.
I'm preparing actually this morning for a pitch competition next week that I'm
doing here in Atlanta and I was thinking like, oh, this is the same way, right?
I have to use expression.
I have to Get their attention.
I have to hook them into what I'm talking about.
And there's a lot of overlap, actually.
More teachers should become entrepreneurs.
Raph: Yep.
Yep.
A little side note here.
I was going to ask you questions about PEI, but you're in Atlanta now.
Okay.
Janessa: We started the business in PEI.
So Prince Edward Island for those who don't know.
And then my husband's originally from Chicago.
And we wanted to spend some time in the States as well.
So we came down to Atlanta a few months ago to launch the app.
So it was the same time as we launched the app on the app store.
And we knew that we wanted to reach a larger market and to build some really
great partnerships with folks and validate some different business strategies.
And so we needed to be at a larger city area to do that.
So we moved down to Atlanta here for a while and we're.
Yeah we're networking and learning a lot about how to sell
the app here in the States too.
Raph: Interesting.
So actually one of the questions that I was going to ask you had to
do with like remote work and working virtually digitally and all of that.
But I guess if you really want to connect with people, it is practical
to have like literal physical people nearby that you can connect with.
Janessa: Yes.
Raph: yeah.
Janessa: And I didn't realize how important that was
until I came here, actually.
I
had been working remotely, the only tech experience I had was all remote.
And so I was always trying to network with folks through a screen.
And now it's just like the level up that I can go for networking
is huge when you go to in person.
Because you go to events in person.
It's people are more likable in person.
I think, you're hanging out
with them.
You're having a drink, you're talking, and then they say, Oh, do you know
this person over here, let me connect you to them, or let's grab coffee next
week, or let's see how this could work, and it becomes more tangible, I think.
And I didn't realize how much business happened in person.
Until I had the opportunity to work on business in person.
Raph: Yep, that makes a lot of sense.
I find networking very draining, but I find that, and so I have a tendency
to just try and stick to digital things, and then I find that whenever
I go to in person things there's so much comes out of it, and I'm like,
oh, I guess it's worth the effort it's worth the emotional effort.
Janessa: Yeah.
We're all so different, right?
I find it energizing.
It inspires me.
And I'm like, Oh, look at these people doing great things and I can do this too.
And they can support what I'm doing and we have this like synergy
and yeah, we're all different.
Raph: Yup, that's so funny.
Yeah I'm kinda curious if you want to just talk about Questread and how things
have been going you started this about a year and a half ago, is that right?
Yeah, technically we started February 2023
Okay, yeah, awesome.
How,
What's the journey been like what steps did you go through to get to where
you are now and where are you now?
Janessa: Yeah.
So we started originally with the former CTO of Simbi and myself.
So we had worked together before and had a great working relationship.
And so we were both passionate about solving the problem of child illiteracy
and wanted to do so with an engaging game.
And so from the start, we were well aligned, had already worked together well.
So we hit the ground running.
And started doing customer discovery with families.
We wanted to sell an app directly to families because there is a gap,
and still is a gap in that market.
Parents are exhausted and overwhelmed, and at the same time
their kids are failing at reading.
In the states here, 70 percent of 4th graders can't read a grade level.
so I talked to parents so many times who are feeling guilty about
their child's reading struggles and they don't know how to handle it.
Raph: Yeah.
Janessa: And so that was really the motivator we had and still is the
passion that lights us because as like starting a business from scratch is
a whole different ballgame than going into one that's already existing.
So what we did is we started with a, we're, we still have a very lean team.
And so our goal is to be as productive and efficient as possible using innovations.
We leverage AI hugely to automate our processes, to help us really in every
area of both the app and the work that we do on a daily basis, which
allows us to continue to be a small team.
That actually functions as a much larger one.
Yeah, so I guess so what we are now we've, the first year was a lot of, like
I said, customer discovery interviews.
We did a pilot, we built out the first version of the iOS app
and it was released on the app store last month.
And so we have, right now we have our first paying subscribers.
We have our first happy users and we are really excited.
We're really focused on increasing the amount of time that those kids
spend reading and getting as close to those folks as possible to learn
more about how we can improve the product, how we can make it better.
And at the same time, we're exploring a lot of different opportunities for
businesses and organizations that want to support and partner with us.
So that's really exciting to me because it expands our reach and the
impact that we can have with the app.
Raph: amazing.
Yeah that's awesome.
I, so I did try the app.
I I don't know if you saw my
Janessa: I did.
I track everybody.
Like
I said, I know who everybody is,
Raph: yeah.
But yeah, I didn't realize it was it was that recent.
That's amazing.
So as someone who is quite deep into the actual tech and writing code
and that sort of thing, I feel like it's so easy for people like me and
Pablo to like just want to stick to the code and just and just build.
But.
With your role in customer discovery and building partnerships and all of
that sort of stuff I'm curious, like, how do you manage that workflow, that
relationship between Pablo who's just building and writing code and managing
infrastructure and that sort of thing and the information that you're finding,
like that you're getting from parents and children and partners, like how do you
coalesce all of those things and bring them together into a coherent product?
Janessa: I think one of the things that I've really learned a lot about
and have put into practice is treating everything like an experiment.
And that's helped me remove my bias for the situation.
I'm a mother of three and I'm highly engaged with my children.
I'm a reading specialist, so I come from a very different perspective
than most of my customers.
And so I have to, Think carefully about what they're actually telling me rather
than what I want them to tell me.
And so documenting everything has been a really key thing for me.
I'm documenting I track every conversation, even, I'm in the
corner store with some other mother and I talk to them and they're
like, Oh, you were doing a reading?
It comes up all the time in my life.
So I track all these conversations like, oh, they were using this app.
Oh, they noticed this problem.
And I make it seem like really natural for them.
I hope it's not a weird interview thing, but I write it all down and
then I see it, look for trends.
And then we use that to inform our decision.
And actually, following the data is important too.
So we might feel really strongly that this like feature is great,
but then we track the clicks on it.
And we're like, that doesn't lead to engagement.
Our north star is, time the kids are spending reading and that didn't do that.
I, there's so many ideas.
Everyone has a cool idea and
I have lots of ideas.
Pablo has lots of ideas.
All our users have ideas,
but if it doesn't hit that North Star and actually move us forward and we
can't justify it, then it's gotta go.
We're just very focused on what we're trying to do.
Raph: Awesome.
How do you, how, what's your process to test the validity of a
an idea before you actually go and spend, time and effort building it?
Janessa: Yeah.
We do a lot of that testing right away.
And thankfully, like I said, I have three children of my own and
they are surrounded by other kids.
So I spend a lot of time with kids.
So for the last couple of years, I have spent, put a lot of things in front
of a lot of kids, even things like we're choosing our mascot right now.
And so we're running ideas by them.
We don't want it to be too kiddish.
And so we're like, we throw it in front of a fifth grade boy.
What do you think of this?
And if he likes it, then probably all the kids younger
than him are going to like it.
And so we're, we put things in front of people before
probably most people ever would.
I don't trust it myself until, my sixth grade son says it's cool
Raph: yep.
Janessa: or
whatever words he's using at the time.
Raph: Awesome.
Nice.
You brought up AI earlier and yeah, AI very much in the zeitgeist.
How, like, how specifically do you use it?
Yeah.
Any tools or yeah.
What's your workflow with it?
Janessa: Yeah.
So one of my favorite ones right now is something called Blaze AI.
I don't know if you've heard of that.
But it's really helpful for me in writing content.
Like all the emails that you have to write to users, for instance,
that are constantly coming to them.
What I like about it is it trains it on my voice.
So I feed it my writing and my style of talking.
And then I feed it the knowledge I want to offer it.
And you can feed it like websites or documents, whatever you like.
And it turns that all together to write content that you want.
So I could create my email funnel campaigns with that tool.
So that's something I use just personally for my own marketing and for writing.
I love writing,
but it can be very time consuming when you have to write 20 emails
for one email flow campaign.
Raph: I yes I'm going through that right now and I'm just like, this is
so much and I, yeah it's exhausting.
I also enjoy it.
I like writing, but yeah, it's nice when you can at least get like a
template off the ground, like something to get you started or to like,
Janessa: Yeah.
And that just as a test too, what I do is I send my husband that email I wrote
and I asked him
if it was sent from me or from Blaze.
And if you can't, if you can't tell, then I'm, I know it's good.
Raph: That is
really, yep.
I love that.
Nice.
Janessa: your voice, right?
It's still you and our brand right now, our brand is very much like my voice.
And until that changes,
I want
Raph: I actually, out of curiosity, like what's your, how what's been your
thinking about like building the brand, like building yeah yeah, the brand
the voice the imagery, all of that.
How's that come about?
Janessa: Yeah.
So it's really come just from what we've learned from customer discovery.
So as I talk to parents and I understand what motivates them and what they're
saying, the themes come across.
So when I did the initial pilot, for instance, I had every parent who
signed up, which was over a hundred families, book 15 minute phone calls
with me or one on one meetings.
And I recorded them all and I documented them carefully.
And then the themes were very obvious.
they felt frustrated they felt guilty there was trigger event usually from the
teacher, that said you know my child isn't reading at grade level and then they were
like what do I do now they are helpless and so that language, understanding who
they are who they are and what they want helps me craft the words I use to talk
to them so I'm not going to talk to that person the same way that I would to
someone, for instance, like me, who is , just a very different perspective on it.
They already, they feel terrible about what's going on.
They feel overwhelmed.
They don't want another thing to do.
They want someone to support what they're doing and that they can be
successful in this and help their kid in a really easy way that they can afford.
And so that narrowing down who they are has helped us think about
how to talk to them very clearly.
Raph: Yeah.
That's awesome.
Um, oh another thing I wanted to talk to you about.
The accelerator.
You got into an accelerator.
Janessa: Yeah,
Raph: how's that?
What's what led you into an accelerator?
What, when does it start?
Are you excited?
Is it A little, yeah, I feel like accelerators to me feel both
exciting and also okay, this is like a, it's going to be an intense,
like three months or whatever or however long this accelerator is.
Janessa: yeah.
it is about three months, which I think many of them are.
I'm really excited about it and I think it will, and we ended up choosing to
do this because I We're at a really pivotal point right now where we have
the product, we have our first users, and we need to validate our go to market
strategy and build out the network and solidify some key partnerships.
And we met with the folks at Ocean and felt very well aligned with them.
They're very focused on impact And on, social change.
And that's the kind of people we want to be in business with.
There's a lot of folks who are their main bottom line is, their return on
investment and we could become who they want us to be for sure, but we didn't
build this to make someone else rich.
We built this to have an impact, to actually make a
dent in the reading crisis.
And so that's what drives us.
And so those are the people that we care about getting to know more.
And we believe that when you do do make an impact and you have real results.
You are effective and make a change that the funding and the finances
will follow that but from the get go, we don't want to be in business
with folks that are not well aligned.
And so we met with Ocean folks.
They were, they really cared about us as individuals.
It's really a holistic program about the founders and supporting you, being a
startup founder is a challenge for sure.
I don't think I could have done this 20 years ago.
This is the things that I've learned and become more resilient and got
some grit, went through some hard times, helped me to get to the stage
where I could do things like this, and where I saw the bigger picture.
So anyways, that's a long answer to your question.
Sometimes I ramble.
But yeah, we're excited about doing this.
It'll involve three different live in person times, ending with a demo day in
September, where we'll get to showcase the things we've learned and we just think
it's going to really push us forward.
Raph: Amazing.
Where's the demo day?
It's, is that in Atlanta?
Janessa: It's in Los Angeles, actually.
Yeah, it's a distributed around the U.
S.
accelerator.
Raph: Okay, cool.
What actually the your process for deciding to go through an
accelerator what was that like?
Yeah.
Janessa: Yeah.
So, this is something that our team has struggled with because you'll
have limited resources and you don't, it has to be somebody worthwhile.
So we researched a lot of different accelerators.
And you we had some early interviews with various different ones and you can tell
pretty quickly whether or not they truly care about you as founders and the product
you do, the mission you're on or not.
And so that was our process.
We learned and tried to see who was well aligned or not.
A lot of times accelerators like look good on paper and it's just a PR stunt
and we didn't, we don't have any time for that.
Like
we're a small team.
We have.
We have books to write.
We have customers to get.
We have relationships to build.
We have things to do.
We can't just spend all our time learning.
And that's that's a whole other topic, but
a lot of people want to teach you things that now aren't necessarily
going to move you forward.
We don't have patience for just PR relationships.
We have to have an actual belief that they're going to move us forward.
Raph: Yeah.
I feel like the struggle and like finding like the accelerators, the
funders, the people who will connect with you on the right level, I feel
like is something that I feel intensely.
My instinct about venture capital more broadly is that There's a lot
of people out there who just want that 10x return, and that's just the
only thing that they're there for.
And I feel like we're in a system that kind of incentivizes that.
So it makes sense that's why they're there.
But with with I think your kind of mission and the kinds of projects
that like we like to work on as well.
It's really important that it's not just a return that people are looking for.
Yeah.
Janessa: It changes the game too when you're bootstrapping, right?
We've got to be very creative about the ways we've gotten money into the business.
So far, and that changes things.
Then you think about, I think about last summer when I rented my house out and
we lived in a camper to raise money for that, or, the, how hard we worked for this
grant to get this funds, and then you're like, am I going to dilute everything
just to get quick money in right now?
And then have them steer the ship.
Like I didn't work this hard and come this far to give it to somebody right away.
Raph: Yep.
Janessa: I
don't know.
Maybe that's a
Raph: I
Janessa: about it, but and
Raph: think it makes a lot of
Janessa: you think it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah.
It's there's a lot of really good people out there too.
And it's worth the time to find people that care about
what you're doing and value it.
Raph: Yeah.
I was talking to someone recently who was talking about founder breakups.
And, it sounded like it was financial things and it was related to misaligned
funding and other, things of that nature.
And I feel like it is so important that everyone actually
care about what you're doing.
If your goal is the mission, like there are some people who find like
the goal is just to make a return.
But for those who are who are mission driven, you have to find
other people who are as well, otherwise it just doesn't work right.
Janessa: Yeah.
Really every company needs to have some kind of a mission
or something that they're working towards.
If you have a clarity in your focus,
then you can have something for everyone to work towards.
Otherwise, you What are you doing?
Raph: Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep.
I totally agree.
Okay.
So we are on the small tech podcast and yeah, I guess you, you already
talked about Blaze, but do you have any other sort of small tech products
that you can that you can talk about?
Something that's made a positive impact on your life?
Janessa: When we, like I said, we moved to Atlanta a couple months ago,
and one of the things that people told us right away when we moved here,
they said the traffic is terrible.
They said, you have to download this app called Waze.
And it
will navigate you around all the things.
And we had never really thought about navigating traffic or trying to avoid
different things, but it's been such a game changer because it changes you in
the moment to reroute you around the pileup that's in front of you or whatever.
So that's been a good little app for us to use.
Raph: Nice.
Yeah.
I use Waze as well.
Yep.
Cool.
Janessa, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
This was amazing.
I feel like I learned a lot from everything you had to say and
yeah, I really appreciate it.
Janessa: Raph.
Take care.
Raph: Awesome.
See ya.
Folks.
That was my interview with the amazing Janessa Ferrell from quest read.
You can go find them at questread.com.
You can find us at smalltechpodcast.com and you can find EC at goec.io.
We're a small team and we can use all the help we can get.
So if you can like, and subscribe on YouTube or give us five stars
in your favorite podcast app, that would be really helpful.
And let us know if you want to hop on the podcast.
If you want to talk to me about the products that you're
building, that would be amazing.
We all want to do something good in the world.
So go out there and build something good folks.
I'll see you in the next one.
See ya.