Disclosure
Chaudhary: ClassDojo monetizes via $10/month parent subscriptions, not school districts
“If we could just create value for parents, enough value that, like, there's something that they want to pay for. That could be interesting, and if it could be, like, relatively affordable on, you know, the order of 10 bucks, let's say. Like, a month, like, tha…”
Insight
Chaudhary: Peer tutoring is among the most effective low-cost educational interventions
“It's also one of the most effective things you can do. It's like, you know, the high cost sorry, low cost, high quality interventions is peer tutoring.”
Disclosure
Chaudhary: ClassDojo does not pay for user acquisition
“It's still primarily organic, and we still don't pay for user acquisition, so so it's all, like, word of mouth, but once it gets to a school, then we really support that mentor to spread the word and to bring other teachers along, if they think it's good.”
Assertion Supported
Chaudhary: ClassDojo is in 90% of US K-8 schools
“So in the US we're in like, 90% of K through eight schools in the country now. Okay. Which is about a 100,000 schools or so.”
Disclosure
Chaudhary: ClassDojo shares board decks and financials with all employees
“So internally in the company, everything is public. Like we board decks are public, financials are public. You have all the information to make like a globally optimal decision about what you should do next, rather than like just getting a sliver of informatio…”
Insight
Chaudhary: At 25 employees, the founder's role shifts to building culture
“You get to about 25 people and your job shifts from building the product to building the culture, and it kind of stays there. And that's so true, right?”
Insight
Chaudhary: Edtech startups must budget runway in 12-month school year chunks
“Like you work in school years. So there's no point you being alive for like three out of the 12 months of the school year. You better be around in 12 month, like chunks.”
Opinion
Chaudhary: Monetizing classroom data with advertising is unacceptable for edtech
“And so when companies like are working in classrooms, I don't think that's acceptable at all. Like that's not like, that would be a really bad way to build and fund an education technology company.”
Insight
Chaudhary: Education innovation requires treating adoption as reversible Type 2 decisions
“It's one of the flaws with the current education system is that, I've already talked about one, which is that, like, there's often stagnation. You can't get new ideas implemented quickly. It's all like what would you call them? Like, type one decisions, right?…”
Disclosure
Chaudhary: PG casually wrote an angel check picked up at his house
“Two days in PG is like, okay, I'm in and like, whatever, I'll write you guys a check and just come around and pick it up. And we're like, So we basically spammed PG for the best part of a week after already having a lot of funding. And then, yeah, then Liam bi…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chaudhary: ClassDojo growth mindset series reached about 15 million kids
“And it was crazy, because we'd never done anything like it before, and we didn't know how it would be used, but we ended up with something like, it's something, I think those videos have reached about, like, fifteen million kids now in classrooms.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chaudhary: 50 million kids have learned growth mindset via ClassDojo
“What we do know is that, like, you know, for fifty million kids, they've been exposed to the idea for growth mindset, and they're using the words in the classroom, and they're using things like you know, it's not that I can't do this yet.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chaudhary: ClassDojo interviewed 300 to 400 teachers before launch
“So, I spoke to, I think, three or 400 people on Skype calls, face to face in those seven weeks, and emailed a few thousand more.”
Disclosure
Chaudhary: ClassDojo has dedicated full-time researchers at 30 employees
“We're only 30 people, but we may be unusual in that we have, like, research as a function in the company. Like, there are researchers in the company who spend all of their time talking to teachers.”
Assertion Supported
Chaudhary: ClassDojo now has more international schools than US schools
“And then this is actually the first year that we're bigger internationally than in the US. So we've got more schools outside”
Disclosure
Chaudhary: Most ClassDojo employees read for at least an hour daily
“We have a pretty obsessive reading culture at Dojo. We have a book club every month, and like, most people like do, I think an hour or so of reading a day at least”
Assertion Partly supported
Chaudhary: ClassDojo rewrote all policies in sixth-grade English for clarity
“Like we, you know, I know a few of us at least wrote our, rewrote all of our policies in like sixth grade language, or sixth grade level English, just so that anyone could understand them, right?”
Assertion Supported
Chaudhary: ClassDojo grew from 80 to thousands of users before Demo Day
“Yeah, so it was, like, roughly a month, like, four or five weeks or so, and it had gone from, like, 80 teachers, like, something, like, a few thousand people using it, and we were, like, this has just blown our minds, right?”
Sam Chaudhary