A Different Kind of Annual Report
Hey y’all, Sarah and Hudson here.
If startup success is 50% luck, then one of our first big breaks was being welcomed into a special community of social entrepreneurs in Austin. They taught us to listen to students when designing programs, study a community to avoid duplicating services, and build data-driven reflection into our cadences — in essence, to be a learning organization.
That same community taught us to always give first, an anomaly in the startup world. Until now, sharing our learning has been limited to morning coffees with local entrepreneurs and stuck-in-traffic calls to partners in other cities. But a resolution for 2020 was to share more deliberately — so, here’s our first formal foray.
In lieu of a traditional annual report, we wrote you a letter highlighting our four key insights from 2019. It’s not a polished graphics-filled booklet, but instead a candid reflection — complete with mistakes, open-ended questions, and roads-not-taken that might have been the better path all along.
Our Four Key Questions Are:
- How do you pick a long-term strategy for growth?
- How do you reconcile what research says with real life?
- How do you grow without burning out your team?
- How do you build a national ecosystem?
We polished the letter for clarity but not for image; as people, as leaders, and as an organization, we are a work in progress. We continue to be humbled by the wisdom of our students, our board, and our community of supporters. We’ve learned plenty in the past seven years, and hope the future holds many more years for us — both the ones that ask questions, and ones that answer.
Hope you enjoy.
Hudson + Sarah
P.S. While this report is focused on our key lessons learned, we also believe data is critical to measuring success. Here are our financials and key metrics from 2019.
Here’s Our 2019 Annual Report.
Click the links above, and they’ll all connect to one another.
