Why Not Me?
Middle School Teacher Turned Entrepreneur Has Unique Approach to Student Success
Student success is a theme that reverberates throughout the events here at TU Incubator. Jess Gartner, Founder and CEO of Allovue, presented her approach to student success in the latest installment of TU Incubator’s Founder Stories.
You can watch Jess’ Founder Story on Facebook.
Five years ago (January 31, 2013) Jess said “Why not me” and quit her job as a Baltimore City middle school teacher to pursue her ideas to close the persistent achievement gap. She found that little had been accomplished in closing this gap between racial and class divides. Rather than approaching the problem through academics she decided to look at the resource gap (money). Could better information on resource allocation help schools and districts better address the achievement gap? She couldn’t find a solution anywhere.
After deciding to “just go for it” Jess was accepted into the Accelerate Baltimore program. Accelerate Baltimore gave her initial funding and support to develop her ideas. More importantly it provided her with a network of people who believed in her.
After learning a lot about the problem and doing considerable user research she formulated her own solution. She found that schools have huge data systems that are impossible to understand. The key was to turn this information into useful data. With a set of wireframes (website blueprints) she hit the pavement in search of funding.
Jess soon discovered she was starting out with three strikes against her. One, she was a sole founder; investors prefer teams. Two, she was a non-technical founder; investors like to have technical talent as founders. And three, she had no experience. Despite this, and along with a lot of “no’s”, she was able to raise $800,000 in seed funding. With seed funding in place she was able to attract software engineers and designers and by 2015 had a product to sell. After a few big wins with customers, Allovue was able to raise a $7M Series A funding round and really take on the market.
Just when things looked to be going great, 2016 turned into “Murphy’s Law” year. A number of district and school personnel, with which she had key relationships, left or retired and the new salesperson did not work out. This necessitated downsizing the team and totally starting over on the sales side.
What did Jess learn for this?
- The founder sale is so important. She had to get out and sell.
- She also had to figure out the sales process. Rather than hiring another salesperson she hired someone to help her build the sales process first.
With the new processes in place 2018 is looking great, sales are up 300% and Allovue has a strong pipeline of customers.
Doug Zeisel, Partner, Technology Commercialization Ventures gave a wonderful summary of Jess’ story.
“Jess gave a truly inspirational presentation and reminded all that attended how determination and perseverance can overcome even the greatest obstacles.”
Amazing how someone with no financial or software coding expertise could come up with a software product that provides much needed financial information to school districts! Equally amazing is the company’s growth and the $7M in funding Jess has been able to raise. All due to enthusiasm and determination.”
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I manage the daily operations and programming of TU Incubator and help to foster an environment that promotes innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship throughout Greater Baltimore.
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