By Devon Ritter
Getting traction with a startup is hard. I began working on the idea of CommunityConnect close to two years ago. Throughout all that time, I always had doubts in the back of my head, lurking and questioning if anyone would ever use the platform I was building. I would often talk with teachers about the problems they were experiencing in their classrooms and their desire to connect their projects with community partners. However, I also realized that there is a big difference between what people say they want and what they are actually willing to spend their valuable time on. I always feared that teachers would express interest in having community partners for their class projects but never actually follow through by logging into the platform to find matches.
However, today I feel like I can put some of those worries aside. A few teachers have independently started using the platform, without any prompting from me, and community partners—whom I have no connection with—have joined them to support their projects. While this has been a confidence boost, it raises an even bigger question. Yes, it’s clear that a handful of people are willing to invest their time in the platform, but are they also willing to pay for it—or at least advocate for their institution to cover the cost?
The next couple of months need to be focused on using this positive traction to start getting sales. My plan is to start with the administrators of the teachers who are already on the platform, demonstrate what the platform has already allowed their teachers to do, and determine what outcomes they would need to see to justify paying for the platform.
For me, the startup journey has always been moving from one question to another. It started with asking what teachers wanted from an online platform to support place-based learning. It eventually went to asking if teachers and partners would use a platform that helped them build connections with one another. Now it is on to ask if administrators will pay for such a platform, and what are the best ways to connect with administrators to let them know what this platform has to offer? Answering these questions is often frustratingly slow and takes hours and hours of effort, but I think it is also important to take some time to celebrate when you are able to answer one of these questions. So that’s what I’ll try to do today, take a moment to celebrate the end of one important stage of the journey and the start of a new one