Guest Post: Starting a Software Company
Guest Post: Starting a Software Company
Part 1: Making the Right Tool for the Job
In the course of working in education and technology, there are frequently times when a tool isn’t quite the perfect fit or doesn’t do EXACTLY what you want. It can be hard when you know something should be technically possible but is just outside your reach. This was the case with our first guest author, Jill Pope. Hearing Jill’s story of starting her own software company to fill a void in affordable ACT-prep for students (and the accompanying data reporting for teachers) is a motivating experience for anyone who’s ever thought “I bet I could make a solution…” Part one of this two-part series will cover what Jill’s software is, why she created it, and the process of planning and implementation she followed.
Have you ever thought about creating a software company? What does it take?
My name is Jill Pope, and I am a teacher with 30+ years’ experience in the classroom. I have taught or am currently teaching Spanish, English, critical thinking & analytical reading, SDC speech and communication, visual literacy & film studies, and ACT Prep. I have also conducted professional development sessions for 30 years and worked on technology implementation and training for 20+ years.
And then I decided to create a software company!
What it is:
Our ScoreSurge program generates detailed reports on specific skills tested on the ACT by allowing students to input answers from retired ACT tests. We utilize a Red/Yellow/Green color-coding to indicate a student’s or a group’s performance in reference to the ACT readiness benchmarks. Detailed reporting allows students, teachers, and schools to identify what areas to focus on in order to improve performance efficiently and effectively. Equally important, the reports help define exactly what skills and question types are regularly asked on the ACT for both students and teachers.
One of our product users and students who recently scored a 36 put it this way: “The ACT is a game, and learning how to play the game is what you get from a solid prep program.”
One of our primary goals is to provide detailed analysis by experts in the curriculum covered by the test at a price that anyone can afford. A student can use the product individually for as little as $15, or schools can contract for as little as $3 per student. Most of the high schools we contract with spend a few thousand dollars to gain full access for a year for all juniors.
The ACT is a game, and learning how to play the game is what you get from a solid prep program.
Why?
Once I started teaching an ACT Prep class and was working with 100 students at a time instead of 1 or 2, I became increasingly frustrated by existing products that did not function well, were sold as ACT Prep, and made promises that their product is perfect for x, y, or z. The products available to me often said they were ACT prep, but they were almost always general math, English, and/or reading content practice of high school curriculum. However, they were not designed to mirror the ACT. The products included skills not tested on the ACT, questions were not formatted similar to the ACT, and their product did not make the “formula” or “pattern” of the ACT visible to students. In my mind, if a student could take the practice already being done in the regular curriculum and transfer it to the ACT, then prep programs would not be necessary. When I did more research, I located one product that appeared to be doing what I wanted, but they charged $12 per student/ per each test he or she takes. That adds up very quickly. I was also frustrated that if a student wanted to hire a tutor or attend an ACT prep class outside of the school, it could easily cost from several hundred to several thousand dollars. As a public school employee my entire career, I feel a level of responsibility to help students apply and transfer what they have been taught. If a student can’t apply their lessons in unique scenarios, have they really learned?
As my frustration grew at products available to help students prepare for the ACT, I searched and did not locate products that suited our needs.
I like to create and problem solve. I have been involved with instructional technology, professional development, data analysis, and curriculum creation for decades. I have always enjoyed the challenge of creating my own- whatever it might be. I had also learned to value the opportunities that a little bit of targeted preparation for the ACT can bring to people.
I decided to create ScoreSurgePrep.com for reasons like these as well as the opportunity to help students and their families. In fact, there were a growing number of instances where a student was able to increase scholarships by an additional $16,000-$30,000, and some students were admitted to programs they were initially rejected from with only a few hours of help. I wanted to be able to give students the tool that they needed to help themselves for as low a price as possible. By creating software that captured this process it would make what I was providing one on one available to anyone who signed up to use the software.
So, where to even begin?!
How?
I’m not going to say that I was savvy or entrepreneurial in my approach, but I considered my resources and what it would take to create a software product with no experience.
Step 1: Viability
Is this a marketable idea? Do I have the ability to envision what it would look like, and would others share that vision? I did more market research. ACT prep is a very competitive field, but if I wasn’t finding the product I wanted, were others? If a school wants to monitor student performance on the ACT in a formative way and to be able to break performance down into discrete skills tested for large groups of students, then there appeared to be a lack of tools to do this. I continued to only find products aimed at individual students and tied to tutoring services and/or products that were extremely expensive. I located and spoke to educators who worked with ACT prep in public high schools, and they were enthusiastic toward what I described. They immediately saw the advantages of my approach in a school setting.
Step 2: Identify Skills and Needs
Evaluate your skill set(s) and identify key areas to hire experts. This project would require a long list of skills:
Analyzing the ACT at a level to make a 2 hour and 55 minute, 215 question test into a list of discrete skills in a format high school students and their teachers could understand and capitalize on.
Programming and software design- where do I even start? I had written a few databases and could envision the logic necessary to create the reporting system, but I did not know any programmers or know how to find one.
Legal contracts would need to be written, copyright rules would need to be evaluated, and an application for a trademark would need to be submitted.
I already had a business license, but I would need help evaluating what changes this would bring with applicable laws, state and federal taxes, and accounting.
Sales and marketing are beyond my area of expertise and my comfort zone. I would need a logo, sales materials, and ad campaigns.
And most importantly, financing the venture would take planning and some decisions about how much I was willing to spend.
Step 3: Reality Check
There came a point where I needed to honestly evaluate the challenges and my willingness to do the work involved and stick with it long-term. So here I am four years later. It has been challenging, but everything has generally moved in a positive direction. The biggest impediment to success so far has been Covid, and that impacted everything and everyone- not just my business.
Step 4: Funding
I decided that I would not go into debt over the project and that I would not pursue venture capital. That meant that I had to be able to finance the project and keep it within a set budget. Once we hired programmers (more on that in part 2), I was able to get a more realistic idea of development costs. It was over my initial estimate but not too much beyond the goal I had set, so I signed the contract.
Step 5: Design and Construction
Whether you program yourself or you hire someone else, as the person with the vision, you have to be able to design every single facet of the product, test it, request modifications, understand what is possible in the programming, and know or guess what different schools, teachers, and students would want in a product. If you also contract with programmers in a different country, you have to be able to answer questions and explain cultural and legal criteria that have to be met.
So, I weighed my options, bit the bullet, and here I am.
In Part 2 I will detail the tech set-up, challenges I had to overcome, and successes that have made it worth doing.
Continue to Part 2: Guest Post: Starting a Software Company Part 2 (edtechirl.com)
Resources:
ACT Prep Test Online: a fraction of the cost of a real ACT - Score Surge (scoresurgeprep.com)
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