Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient Logan Cohen, Co-founder of Küdzoo

This is episode number one with Logan Kohan of Kudzu. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Cult of Startup podcast. My guest today is Logan Kohan.

She's the co-founder of a mobile application called Kudzu. How are you today? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you for being a guest with us. I'm really excited to get into this interview because I believe you have a number of experiences that our guests are going to really enjoy and really come to understand what it takes to make a mobile application successful.

So Logan, I'm really curious to know what is your entrepreneurial background? Yeah. My entrepreneurial background, I think I was first exposed to entrepreneurship. There was Moses growing up.

My parents were very entrepreneurial, but in a classic sense, my dad was an accountant, but worked with mergers and acquisitions of small companies. Then my mom actually branched out and started her own audiology practice after 30 plus years with a firm. Wow, that's awesome. Do you feel like they've influenced you to be who you are today the most?

They certainly have. I can walk the walk a little because my father is actually our CFO. So we were able to coach him for Kudzu. And then also just my mom being able to start her own practice, especially a little later in life, was incredibly inspiring.

And I'm glad I got to see it firsthand. That's awesome. I feel like having parents who have an entrepreneurial background doesn't necessarily give the future entrepreneur a full advantage, but it definitely gives them maybe a leg up and understanding, well, my dad knew the ropes and he was able to get through it. My mom knew the ropes and they were able to get through it.

I'm able to do it too. Certainly. And also experiencing first hands, the ups and downs of it, because it kind of readies you to see that entrepreneurship isn't always just conferences and starry-eyed and awesome podcasts. It's hard times sometimes too.

Oh, I'm sure it's definitely a very different world when your parents are entrepreneurs. Right now entrepreneurship is definitely glamorized. And I have a bittersweet relationship with that. Because I'm kind of part of that doing a podcast on startups, but I do feel like there's no practical information out there about it.

Certainly. So I know you mentioned a little bit about feeling the ups and downs with your family. Could you maybe go into a little bit detail about that as that could have applied to what you're doing today? Yeah, of course.

Well, by the time I was in high school, my dad had always been with a big accounting firm and then he worked in emergency acquisitions and radio and he decided to form a startup. Now that was in early 2000s. I'm dating myself right now, but he took the risk and a pretty large risk because he left a solid job, had two kids and a wife, and decided to start with a venture, raised capital. I didn't know what the rounds were called back then, but then they ran into a roadblock and he wound up investing much of his own money into it.

It wound up being a loss. He had to explain it to investors. And I remember both of my parents explaining a change in lifestyle to me, but never let it affect me and anything, opportunity that came up. So I just saw them persevere for many reasons and took taking on risk.

And even managing shareholders, phone calls to let them know that their money was gone, I think was a huge learning experience, even though I didn't really take it in at the time, I think about that and how I don't want to do that. Well, I actually love that. The risk aversion education that you got at an early age, I think more kids maybe should be exposed to that because there's a certain amount of timbiness, I feel like that people are apprehensive to possibly jump into the entrepreneurship boat and ride those seas. Certainly, certainly.

And it was really cool to see the beginning. And I mean, I was 14, 15, but my father saying, this is going to be the next big thing and the starry item. And of course, I look up to him and he's incredibly bright and to see him go from the next big thing to trying to manage shareholders and keep it together. I mean, I'm accelerating it.

It took place over about two years, but it was definitely a learning experience. I love that. And I say big props to you for continuing that entrepreneurial courage that your parents had and having that mentality. I wish everybody would be an entrepreneur and everybody would want to start it.

But that isn't always the case. And I respect you a lot for doing that. So that leads me into your entrepreneurial experience at a core because you currently own a mobile app company called Kudzu. Could you tell me about that?

Certainly. I am a co-founder and co-CEO of Kudzu. Kudzu is a free mobile application. We reward students based on their academic achievements.

So students down with the up for free, they sign up by registering their name as well as their school and they submit their grades, checking to school each day to track their attendance. And we also track their grade average improvement where they get a currency, which we call Kudzu cash that they could use for real time rewards. Wow. It sounds like you pitch that a handful of times.

Never. That was my first time. Wow. A plus.

So you actually were getting sent to the plus because you have for that. That was right. So let's see. I want to ask you a little bit about maybe the inception of Kudzu because your co-founder has a unique story and how he went from maybe a non-ideal background to a very somewhat successful startup that's got funding that's in a really great position.

I would love to hear more about that. Certainly. So our micro founder, Trevor Wilkins, I may be biased, but he is awesome. I have to call him my work husband.

We literally spend so much time together. But he thought of the original idea of Kudzu. He was up front or he is from the south side of Chicago. He wanted to go into Princeton and studying sociology.

And while he was there, he found that a lot of the his peers that are there were at the level of or not as smart as the kids that he grew up with. And he said, why did they go down different paths, sometimes dark paths? So there was jail or they passed away while I'm here at Princeton and I'm from the same place or why these kids are here at Princeton with all of these opportunities. What he chopped it up to was instant gratification and a strong support system at home.

So both the Trevor's parents are incredible people and they've actually incentivized him for getting good grades throughout his entire academic career. He would actually get a $10 for an A, $5 for a B and have to pay them for C's $25 each. Trevor Wanda Gwynne Princeton is brother graduated Yale and his sister is currently at UPenn. So he was like, hey, wouldn't it be cool for kids to get paid for grades on a massive level?

He wanted to scale it as quickly as possible. We met at all places at a Phillies game. We wound up staying in. I didn't tell you that earlier, but I'm a very avid Dodgers fan.

So I don't mind the Phillies. So if you're a Phillies fan, you know, Jason Lee, he percolated to the Dodgers. So there's a relation there. I'm an avid basketball fan.

I'm glad I was at the Phillies game that day, but I can't really get into it. Bummer, bummer. We wound up staying in touch because we were both freshmen in college at that time. We didn't go to the same schools.

And then just stayed in touch via Facebook wound up circling back after I graduated college. And he told me about this idea. I said, what are you doing about it? So I really just, I think it'd be great if it existed, really trying to scale it.

And that's how we got going. The business major and myself met the sociology major of the visionary of Trevor and could do was born. I love that. And could you maybe go into a little bit more detail about the personalities of you too?

Because you said that you, it sounds like you're more of the cut and dry cross your T's dot your eyes and he is more of the visionary. How does that work out as a startup for you to? Yeah, it's a great balance. I probably have way too many lists for my own good.

I have a list about making lists, basically. And Trevor, it was up to him. We'd be working on like a future functionality of cloning kids on the moon. So it's a nice balance of like execution, yet forward thinking and a balance of also reminding each other like what's the ROI of each functionality?

Let's stop playing God with the app and let's have a focus here from the users because we're not as young and cool as we think we are. So I mean, it's cliche. You always hear, don't surround yourself with yes people, but we try not to, even if we agree, I'll never say I like that. We're actually not allowed to say that to each other.

It has to be, well, I like that because or that works because the students spend this much time on that screen, but don't go to the screen enough. That's why it's good. That has really helped balance myself and Trevor. OK, I think you're touching on a really cool point here.

And I'm just going to venture to say, was that word of advice received through and like a mentor or an advisor? Um, it was not however, it was received through principles that I read. I'm currently obsessed, even though we're a small team with how to build a company culture and it came across a company's principles, core principles that I read. And I loved that rule because so many people say, like, don't be a yes person.

So everyone always wants to disagree, but you don't have to be a devil's advocate. You could still like something as well, but you like it for different reasons. So define why you like it because it helps the product, because it helps scale, whatever it might be, because I might think that it's because the design looks cool and expands everyone's horizons. That's awesome advice and anybody who's listening right now, note that it matters what other people are saying to you and that everybody's opinion is going to be significantly different than even if you're both agreeing, your opinions on what you're agreeing on is different.

Certainly. So I want to talk a little bit about, um, you mentioned that he said that the students at Princeton were no smarter than he is. And that actually reminds me of a Steve Jobs quote, I could find the reference and cue it into this podcast, but he talks about that nobody else is technically smarter than you, that everybody has a similar, everyone has the same ability to make something happen. How do you incorporate that into what you do?

Well, um, from a personal level, it's, it's a constant motivation as cliche as it sounds that if you think the world is going to be a better place, if something existed, now it doesn't need to be a cure for something or providing clean water, even though those are magnificent things to do. But if you're just like, Hey, the world would be cooler if Quincy was here or kids would really engage with this if that existed and it's up to you to have it. I mean, I'm not going to take an IQ test to see if I can do it. I'm just going to try to do it by any means necessary.

Awesome. Awesome. So a follow up question to this. How did you guys go about developing this application?

Did you hire developers is one of your team members, a developer? Do you have a designer on your team? Is it a loud source? What is your mechanism for producing the mobile application?

Yeah, we are a mobile app startup that I like to say we're a salmon. We like to swim upstream and neither of us have tech backgrounds. We do not have a tech o-founder or in-house tech. I love that.

You're both hustlers. Yeah, yeah. So mix of hustling and like commitment issues. So we caught developers and we weren't able to like read and confirm that the code was a quality to like give anyone equity and bring them in-house quite yet.

We got burned twice with development teams. So that's some advice that I gave early on, on like Snapchat or any other forms that I can communicate with entrepreneurs, just how to be careful when you are contracting developers. But the dev team that we have now is a dream there. If I could just plug them, they're called Jarvis, they're based in Philadelphia.

So hands on, they have a consulting CTO who works hand in hand with us and their front end and back end devs are incredible, so talented. That's a great point to have. So I just speaking to the audience here, I understand that you don't always have to go and find a developer to be part of your team. You can outsource that work, but just as you said, do it with maybe an air precaution?

I completely agree with that. There are too many cookie cutter rules in entrepreneurship when none of like entrepreneurship is so not a cookie cutter method of a livelihood. So of course, like if we're going to recommend bring on a tech co-founder or even just to the founding team, I completely agree with that. If you know someone who's awesome and you work well with them, please go ahead and do so Trevor and I could not wait to begin this to vet out a correct CTO.

And at this time, could do has raised a couple of rounds, but we cannot afford the quality CTO that we need. So we have a consulting CTO who's a rock star that we couldn't afford if you was on full salary. We have a great front end web designer. She's incredibly talented, but once again, couldn't afford if she was on full time and because you take on the risk as you want to run mean as a startup, but how are you going to hire talent that provides them with the benefits and salary that they deserve or they're used to?

Of course, there's an equity option, but because you decided to contract those. Yes, I personally have experienced this as well. It's a, you kind of got to play the dance. You got to go, well, am I going to offer the equity or am I going to offer them pay and which incentive for that person is the most appropriate.

And oftentimes they do like the money a little bit better than maybe the equity because there's a guarantee with the money, right? Certainly. Then also in this competitive landscape, they can really shop around and also just so that it's full disclaimer out there, we have contracted devs. However, when you go to speak to some investors, as well as institutionalists, some shy away from founding teams without a tech background.

Just get ready for that. But you always want the right fit. Okay. Now let's talk about this right now.

So you talked about getting investment. This is a big piece that everybody thinks about. I want to know, and this is maybe a little bit of a story. What did you guys start out with when you first met?

Did you have prototypes mockups, thumbnails, whatever it may be? And then how did you go about getting it developed and then leading me all the way to that investor meeting? Who? Okay.

When we started, we had a really beautiful website saying coming soon. Awesome. Two starry-eyed kids with an idea. I like to say we have a running joke.

I'm somewhat animated and I have a lot of passion when I pitch to investors, Trevor has the same amount of passion, but he's very mom to him when he speaks. So he'll just like, this is going to be great. You guys should really come in and like Trev, like if you don't believe it, no one else will. He's the best kind of pitchers.

That's kind of funny. But yes, when we started, a mobile app doesn't just appear as most of, you know, we have wireframes. We're working like crazy in the back and I like to equate it to a play, right? Everything looks cool on the outside, but everything's cardboard in the back.

So we're working to launch our first minimal viable product or MVP. But we had a registration on our domain name just saying, would you want to get paid for your grades, register with, I think there were two fields and email address as well as work stage because students had to be 13 years or older. I like this. Did you guys drive traffic to your site for that?

Yeah. I like, okay, I've worked in the middle space a lot and I have somewhat of a failure where we launched a mobile application and we called it creating a party without inviting anybody. So we launched it and we expected it to be a bunch of downloads. Well, we didn't get a bunch of downloads.

So I want to learn more about how you guys got that signup list and then launched your party correctly. Yeah, for getting the signup list, there needs to be some sense of mystery there. I see a lot of startups on whether it's in their decks early on or even on their website, way too much information to verbose, TMI off the bat, have a sense of mystery. Like it's coming.

Like our landing page was, are you a student? Cool. Do you want to get paid for your grades? Seriously.

And then it was signed up here and it was all one screen. You didn't have to scroll. The conversions were pretty high. We had close to 13 or 15,000 pre registries just interested in the app.

And those are people who entered in the fields to be realistic with that lesson. We were expecting less than 10% to actually download the app because we just sent an email to them to remind them that the app is out. I wound up being a little more than that, which was awesome, but that helped for sure. Okay, so pick up the story from there on.

Oh, so from there on, we shopped around a little bit with developers. I'm going to kind of gloss over this because I touched upon us not being so happy with dev teams coming out, but we did get an MVP out with the first dev team. The quality of code was not something we were very happy about, but the design and the user interface was great. So that was out into market and to get our audience off of the bat, we had to make a decision because it has two routes, right?

We're free for students and those are our users. However, we have a monetization strategy through brand sponsors. Students aren't going to use the app, but there are no rewards for their grades. Brand sponsors aren't going to sponsor those rewards if we have no eyeballs on the app.

So they're a real chicken or the egg issue. We decided to build to take on the task of building a critical mass of users by any means necessary. And with this, we said, how about we have students register? We'll keep the cost per user acquisition below a certain number, way below the industry average of about $1.52.

We haven't exceeded $0.25 and early on, it was about $0.09 per user acquisition, which was awesome for us. Yeah, it wasn't so glamorous, but it was a good time. Definitely. So we were able to register our first, like a couple of thousand users.

When I say that, it was like five, maybe 8,000 users to the app, got to get live feedback and something that also really helped myself. And Trevor was we taught a class on entrepreneurship once a week in West Philadelphia to 14 to 16 year olds. And that was our target demographic. Okay.

So customer development, it's heard all over the valley or Silicon Valley. And anybody's going to start up and go, well, you got to do your customer development. I have an advisor here who calls it gooping, getting out of the building. And tell me a little bit more about that experience in doing customer development in Philadelphia.

We were all about customer development. We knew what we were doing. We totally stumbled into this. So when we were trying to get people to sign up for our website, Trevor and I would go into school fairs and talk to the principal and say, Hey, can we come in and do an assembly at lunchtime hoping like 20 kids would sign up?

We were on the ground doing this. So I was presenting in Philadelphia one day to a couple of principals and I was talking about what the idea for the app was and what we're thinking about expanding. And this principal interrupts me and goes, my kids love to learn. I said, that's good.

And they're passionate about getting their education. They don't need you. So I responded. Do you love being a principal?

And he said, yes, I said, are you passionate about educating kids? Yes. So how about we stop giving you a paycheck and everyone started laughing. And then he wound up asking me to come see entrepreneurship out of school.

So that started and we taught there for about two years and the kids not only learned how to do an elevator pitch and start their own, basically startups, which is really cool because they get a pitch competition at the end. But they also served as a live focus for us. Anything from like, Oh, Miss Logan, do not use this word. That's not cool.

That green is not trustworthy. You should change it to this color green. I don't know what that means, but it worked. I'm really honest.

First off, you're one hell of a negotiator for saying that directly to a principal, but you got the point. I want to dive a little bit deeper into how do you keep track of those metrics that you heard from those students? So the varying colors, whatever it may be, what do you use to document that and how did you revise your plan over time in that documentation? Yeah.

So going just, this, I know it's a niche market, but I think it's relevant to any kind of user. Let them speak, let them explore your app or even landing page. I remember bringing in the first landing page. I was so excited about and we tore it apart.

Kind of right. But I'm glad they did. In our setting, we were very transparent as in, like, this is a focus group. You guys are helping to build this because, I mean, users and students are a lot smarter than they get credit for.

So when they're aware that they're helping to build something and they're part of the progress, rather than being a guinea pig, it's a lot more comfortable than environment. So we would actually just old fashioned whiteboard it in the class and track all of their comments. There were some like what I like to focus group with lash just like comments from like way left field that you don't need to change your entire product for, but it's good to keep in mind. And then Trevor and I actually just like we have a functionality roadmap.

We probably want too many Google Docs that are good for, but we also have a focus group roadmap as well. And just like, remember, someone so said this in 2015. Definitely. I really like the point that you brought up where you listen to the customer.

You kind of just let them talk. And in my experience and what I see other entrepreneurs too, is they get caught up in maybe a yes or no questions or not letting the customer tell them what their problems are. Did you experience that? Oh, certainly far too often what I witnessed with entrepreneurs and I don't even want to see my first pitch.

Like it was really horrible. But when it comes to explaining a product, like let's say I have an MVP out and I want to see how a customer interacts with the app far too many entrepreneurs are just seeking affirmation. They're just seeking, um, aren't I great? Isn't this product great?

It's going to be huge, right? No, no, no, you go here and here's a menu button. Here's this. Just be quiet.

This is the greatest gift that a user can give you. You give them the app and then you see what they do naturally because not everyone is going to have the founder over their shoulder telling them what to do. I thought that the menu button was so clear and it wasn't in our MVP. Kids were lost.

We were getting a lot of attrition as soon as they download the app. They didn't know what to do when it was like breathing to me. That was very awakening and I just feel like entrepreneurs are seeking way too much affirmation for their own good. I completely agree with that point to a T and oftentimes in that customer development, you get a lot of people who maybe sort of grin and nod.

Oh, yeah, that's a great idea. I really like that. But in the conversation, you kind of get the gems of here, the true problems, here are the ways that you can address them or how they're currently solving them. I really do enjoy that.

So let's, let's talk a little bit more about your business model because you, you're mentioning that this is sort of a chicken and egg problem that you had initially in creating some sort of fun for this. Could you go into detail about how you developed your business model and maybe even discuss a little bit about how this is unique within mobile applications as well? Certainly. We discovered our business model, I would say like the fundamentals of it very early on because it was part of our mission.

Of course, because he wants to, what we say, engage and power and reward students. But we're also looking at other opportunities in the market. If you want to be a sustainable business, I mean, anyone can give up free stuff to people and they be interested. But how do you actually become sustainable and also provide an overall good in the world for lack of a better term?

So when we were seeing that brands who have these budgets are unable to connect with this, what people say future consumer, but I argue that it's a current consumer because they're spending tens of not hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but while supporting education. So they'll purchase an ad that's intrusive or invasive on another social media platform to the user experience. We were thinking on kudzu ads or rewards. You're meeting students at the euphoric moment of achievement and they're actually looking for your brand.

So it was pretty early on that we said, listen, we don't want to supply the rewards. We're not going to buy a kudzu warehouse and ship things out. Let's just get gift cards and share the codes with the student achievers when they earn them. That's awesome.

And really unique that you were able to adapt your product to doing that. I know when I first saw it, I was like, wait, we make money off this? Were you getting the money to pay students? Like that doesn't make sense.

Like, OK, but now it now it does make sense. OK, relating back to what I was asking earlier, so we're going through that storyline leading up to investment. So the last piece that we're talking about was you doing customer development in schools. Sounds like through that, you were able to find your business model, maybe a little bit of history between it and then lead me up to when you did your first angel pitch.

Yeah, our first investor was actually a high down with individual. He's a friend of a friend and I wound up having a phone call with him in the beginning. He really liked the idea. I mean, it's a pretty unique idea and even more interested when we actually had someone of a monetization strategy, not just like, let's get all the users and figure it out later because as we know now, that's dying or dead.

So I didn't think much of the phone call. I was looking at more of a mentor opportunity and then like two weeks after that, we received an invite to, I was in Pennsylvania at this time. Oh, a little background, I was getting my master's in accounting or studying for my GMAT when I circled back with Trevor. He told me about this idea.

I halted it because I figured that will always be there. And I wound up moving back in with my parents after college to start this. And Trevor wound up graduating from Princeton instead of going back to Chicago where he's from, he actually moved in with my parents too. So we're working with my parents basement.

He's living in their guest room. So when we say my parents were supported, it wasn't only from their entrepreneurial ways, like they went above and beyond to say, okay, like you both have degrees and you're doing this? You good? Okay.

You can go get a career, but you're going to stay in my house. Right. Yeah. Oh, they weren't empty nesters anymore.

That's for sure. Yeah, they actually got one more kid. So we're sure when that happened, we got a phone call that they wanted to meet in New York City. So we're like, Oh my gosh, what are we going to do?

And it's actually pretty casual. We wound up going to a steakhouse, Trevor and I never pitched before ever. Like no angel pitch competitions, none of that having a conversation with them. I remember being cringe just thinking about this.

But his first question was what's your monthly burn? And I didn't know what that meant. Back then, yeah, it was so embarrassing. And he's like, what do you spend a month?

I was like, Oh, no, this is lean. And then that's when it hit me. Like I need to read about entrepreneurship. Like I know everything I can calculate future values right now.

I have a degree in finance. I don't know monthly burn. What's wrong with me? I thought we totally bombed it.

He wound up contacting us after we left. I mean, it was a pleasant night, but we didn't think we sealed the deal. It was a lot of background and where we see this company going. Cause there wasn't a lot that was tangible at the time, just some interest.

And he wound up offering us what is now $60,000, which was like hitting the water back then, because it was at the last of the very beginning. Certainly, certainly. And that was our first investment. We, our parents at that time did not put any money in.

We were just graduating college. We were both broke. So $60,000 really helped us build out our MVP. And also that one investor wound up introducing us to a couple of investors and his network who then put in money.

Hi. So you got the top ramen money that you used for development and other things to live. I want you to touch maybe a little bit on maybe the difference between a convertible note or an equity based investment from an angel investor and your experience with that. Certainly, um, I want to preface it with it's really case by case.

It's up to your startup and I would definitely consult with some mentors or even someone with like an accounting background. I was very fortunate that my dad was knowledgeable in the space in the CPA. Um, so he would know all about it. Yes.

However, it was a really cool balance because he's such a wealth of knowledge. However, for the tech startup world, it's a little bit different than what he was used to could do, decided to do everything straight equity, meaning that we had set valuation rounds raised in tranches. So our first valuation was actually, it was pretty good for first evaluation. It was 1.25 million, um, which we were proud of at the time.

Um, we wound up raising a couple of 100,000 at that round. Um, then you build it up and everything, like I said, was straight equity, Christ rounds, uh, except we, um, last year, one, Princeton's alumni entrepreneurial fund and they were a convertible note. So when we're thinking of a convertible note, there is an agreed upon, um, evaluation. The investor gives you money, but they can convert to equity or get their money back with an agreed upon interest with it.

Uh, so if your company's doing well, the investor's going to want to convert to equity because the company's growing and why not? And that there's an agreed upon valuation in the beginning. If not, they have, after a certain amount of time, agreed upon in the beginning, they get their money back plus some kind of interest. Okay.

So I like how you've actually had both in your business. I have yet to talk to somebody owns a startup that started off with equity based, uh, angel investing and eventually said, well, we can do a convertible note. And I mean, it sounds like you won that through some prize, but that's still an option you have, and you can go, well, we can pay it off with our previous investment, but we had that money to use. Certainly.

Certainly. Just because they're such a great resource. Um, however, I did and my team prefer to do, um, the straight equity, um, more so because it's what we talked about before, um, you want to think about your business model. When we face the chicken at the end, we were focused and are focused on the organic growth of users.

Now that doesn't necessarily convert to bringing in revenue. So we didn't want to have any debt on our cap table or, um, balance sheet, I should say, while we're fundraising and having an convertible note right now. So we just do straight equity. We have investors who really believe in us and our grassroots effort of building this and then revenue by design is coming in later when we bring in the brands after we go to critical massive users.

Yes. So you mentioned a very big point. I think some startups need to understand possibly about leverage. So you talk about wanting to have Princeton on your, let's say, one quote resume as a startup.

What was the strategy and possibly having that and the advantage that maybe other startups could utilize in understanding that concept? Yeah. Um, one, I mean, just to be completely honest, credibility, people, uh, especially some angel investors, um, aren't interested in taking up a meeting with you until they find what school you went to and what's your background and who else is in it and all that fun stuff. Um, I'm just, I'm just being honest, some of the greatest people still function like that.

So to say that Princeton, uh, and not only believes in Kudzu and has an alumni as a co-founder of Prince Trevor went there, but actually invested in us. So they're on the cap table and not only that, they converted, um, their note at the last round. So Princeton's, um, people who you could argue are some of the brightest minds kind of solidified our last valuation to when some investors are like, well, that's high. Um, Princeton converted.

Yeah, you can immediately respond with that. I've seen this before, that there's somewhat of a domino effect that happens with investment where if you get one key person on your side, that key person can actually, you know, set a chain reaction at, well, so on, so on, so on, so on, so on and so on. There's a certain amount of trust or rapport already built into that. Oh, certainly.

And then just being realistic, um, getting an investment is incredibly difficult. You're going to get a lot more nose than yeses. Um, like I said, I was nervous. I flubbed the monthly burn, which is like the easiest question, but I think that our passion shines through and, um, our vision for the company and we weren't too high in the sky with it.

We still have the tangibles of the pre-registrations and all that fun stuff. But, um, like you said, it's a real domino effect, but if you can't get that first investor or you're struggling to do so, get a key advisor. There are some brilliant minds that maybe just don't have the money liquid at this time, but the person that does, it's lacking that knowledge that has the money would say, oh, so and so from the professor of finance from this university is on your board or here and there's so many resources that you could build your startup with, um, that doesn't cost any money. Okay.

You're bringing up an awesome point again and there's plenty of awesome points that are happening here. So as a student, how would the student maybe go about utilizing university faculty to quote unquote their advantage for their entrepreneurial adventures? What would you recommend to them? If you're a student, you need, and you're interested in entrepreneurship, you need to start your first startup at school.

Like you, I wish I started earlier because it's okay. It's, I would argue that it's always okay to fail, but it's really okay to fail when you're still in college. I know that you're busy with extracurriculars and your schoolwork, but if you really manage your time, um, join it. I mean, we got the investment from Princeton because Trevor was involved in their e-labs, our entrepreneurial lab while he was still there.

Um, we, I would really recommend that. And so leverage the relationship that you have with faculty, no matter what institution you're, you're in, everyone has some kind of experience from their different walks of life. Um, what, think outside the box when it comes to your idea of the startup, like for could do, of course, you would think we're ed tech slash ad tech. Who would I talk to?

What kind of professor? I love speaking to child psychologists, um, thinking about how, how will students like to use the app? What color should we use? I thought I should use the same palette because it looks nice.

And they said, no, people who are colorblind won't be able to tell the difference in your buttons. It's just things to think about. So when you have the wealth of resources at your institution, I mean, schedule a meeting on contact them for office hours at the very least, you're practicing how to write a professional email with a call to action. I can relate to that on multiple levels.

When I was working for a mobile app for children, we actually were like, who do we talk to at the university? And it was like childhood psychology, they probably know something about this. And you want to know what? They helped a lot.

They were very helpful. Awesome. Yeah. You're so right.

All right. So let's go maybe a little bit deeper into how did you guys discover who your target market is and what I'm most curious about is how on earth were you able to get millennials as well as younger markets, so those that are in elementary school or 13 older, so I guess junior high in high school to actually take the time, download this app and continue to be a daily active user with the application. Yeah. So the first part of that of defining our target market, to be completely honest, we wanted to, we wanted to have a course to have a strategy going out, but we didn't want to define it before it was actually born.

So when a lot of people want to hear about Clotho, they go, Oh, it's sometimes what you're doing for kids, I don't have the resources and don't have this. Now we are a form, I like to say, a proactive form of social media that engages kids in their education. Anyone who's a student can sign up to could do. Now that I say on top of that are the reviews saying, I was thinking of dropping out of school, but could you motivated me to stay in and I actually passed math.

Now, like that is so powerful to me, but I would never have the audacity to come out of the gate, especially not having an educational background and say that we do so. So when it came to target market, we really just focused on great, not so much socioeconomic level, and we focus on 14 to 16 year olds because that's who we were working with in our class in West Philadelphia. So we wanted to get high schoolers to check it out and also because we wrote our copy in the app with a tone of what we like to say, the cool overclassmen. Everyone wants to hear like from a senior when you're a freshman or sophomore, right?

So we're focused on 14 to 16 year olds, but maybe like your cool overclassmen is telling you about this app. So that's how we started out in the beginning, when Trevor and I were going to schools, it was really anyone who would pre-register with it. But then when we really wanted to scale, and we were, we were proud of our first like 5,000 users on the app. We said, how were we going to scale this?

I went to every AdWords class you could imagine and any bid words that we wanted to get were so expensive, especially for the budget that we had at the time. Until we stumbled upon influencer marketing, which has been great for us. So I started to think about kids aren't searching, get paid for grades, and we're going to show up on the 50th page if we buy like college as a word. So how are we going to reach them?

And it dawned on me when I was actually on Facebook. I didn't, I don't know if they got mad and get mad, but I thought it was very intrusive to see an ad in the middle of my feed. So I wound up asking the kids in class that week, do you guys like sponsored ads on your news feed? And they go, no, it's deceiving.

We hated it so annoying. So do you like the brands that are there? Well, I was still shocked there, but I kind of get annoyed with them. OK, so I thought that that was a very interesting feedback.

And let's say it's an ad for a pair of sneakers. It's annoying to them if it's on their news feed. And then I asked them like what bloggers do they like? And some students mentioned a fashion blogger.

I said, if that fashion blogger was wearing that same pair of shoes, they're like, Oh, I'd try to buy them, but they'd be sold out. Interesting. So we were very inspired by that. It's the same product, same brand, but brought to you by a lifestyle influencer that you aspire to either be like or you like their style, whatever it might be.

I found myself guilty of this. If I see a pair of shoes on my feed, I don't think twice, but if I see a fashion blogger fashion, we're wearing it with a great outfit, I might check them out. You're more inclined to. So we translated this and trying to scale at first an Instagram and we went to different influencers, which want to be incredibly cost effective, no celebrities, but accounts of 200, 500,000 users and they're usually owned by someone in our target demographic.

So like negotiate with a 14 year old, no, 40 bucks an hour, 30 bucks an hour. That was really funny. And those were converting to signups, not only downloads, signups and it was so cheap, like five to 10 cents per user acquisition at that time, but it wound up being somewhat finite when it came to who we were contacting. And we started working with a firm that has a reach on Twitter to hundreds of millions of followers of anything from an account like prom proposals.

We know that that's our target demographic. We're following them yet to they'll tweet about it without it looking at and it'll convert because they're letting the students know that this is something cool and this is something that they trust because it's quality product. So I love what you're talking about here. And this is somewhat of a phenomenon I don't know if marketers would identify as that, but I'm going to call it for now that there's a huge shift going towards influencers in buying products.

I myself am a avid follower of Tim Ferriss and I've honestly purchased a handful of products that he's recommended. I haven't purchased something from a big brand because I thought I respected that brand in a long time. So this is huge conversion that's happening in that space. And it's amazing that you were able to sort of stumble upon this by going, I love the phrasing of your question.

Do you guys like your ads? No, they're annoying. They're kind of, I don't want them to be there, but do you still like the brands? Well, yeah, it's really funny and don't even get them started.

What was it, Pandora ads and YouTube ads? They hated those, just they're getting in the way of what I want to do. Yeah. And I believe at least myself personally and I'm just hopefully true for the younger generations and I'm not too out of tune with it, but that they're going to be purchasing their products because through social media platforms, because that's where their attention actually is.

It's not going to be on TV. They want to skip over ads on TV. And if they're watching TV during commercials, they're probably looking at their phones, certainly, certainly the time spent on apps now exceeds the time they are in front of a TV. It's incredible.

So tell me how many users do you have that are active users today? Active users today, we have 500,000. Wow, that is incredible. And they are using it on a daily basis or they're reporting their like report cards at the end of the quarter or end of the semester.

Yeah. So double full of that. When we even all the way back to our minimal Bible product, we were like, Hey, report cards only come out of certain time, like each year, maybe four, maybe five times being generous with it. Our app is going to die if they remember to upload, if not one or two of those.

So we're like, Hey, let's build in some trivia or SAT questions, depending on the grade level, daily, just fun challenges for them. And that was like a last minute thought, a lot of being our highest engaged page, because they can earn kazoo crash daily in our next version, and in our original version, we were also tracking attendance, but students would have to enter in the amount of days that they skipped based on honor code for their goods. So you can imagine how that went, even though I love the students, but yeah. So we did a little engagement hack and we integrated with four squares API at our next version.

So kids check into school daily. So we saw our engagements spike after that because they had an excuse not only for the trivia, but you get off the bus or you open your locker, check into kazoo, call it a day. So it became habitual. Okay.

So I want to propose a scenario to you. I'm a student. I'm in junior high. I think I'm a clever sucker, and I'm going to rig the system by fabricating my grades and fabricating my attendance.

How does kazoo prevent that? Yeah, we, when we started, um, as I mentioned, and as you had imagined, we're like, we can't have kids submit their own grades. Like that would be crazy. We would, there are so many honor codes that we could put in there, but good luck.

So we wound up going through schools and we have a number of partnerships with leading school districts and they were very supportive. However, when it came to the time of, um, great exports to be transferred, we learned quickly that educators are busy enough and we weren't at the top of their to-do list. So we were losing engagement until one day I was submitting a paycheck on my mobile banking app, uh, thought about OCR, which is optical character recognition and said, if banks can trust this technology, which checks, why can't you trust it with report cards? So we beta tested that, um, wound up being okay, uh, quickly learned that checks are universal while report cards, GPAs can be at the top or bottom and name could be all over the place.

So we still use a hybrid method of verification. So for that savvy student that's trying to augment, um, their report card or change it in any way, they submit it. Um, the OCR recognizes whether, uh, it is indeed a report card. Cause sometimes we get a picture of the floor or hand just to see if the product works.

So that quick to deny those submissions. Um, the other submissions that do come up as a report card is actually manually verified by a team member, one of our interns or even myself in Trevor, uh, during our free time, go ahead and check not only is the report card consistent, um, to that district or other submissions that student has put in, but also to make sure that Logan's not scanning Trevor's report card. Oh, so that's even trickier. You can go scan another student's report card and go, this is mine and ideas right now or anything, but yeah, not hopefully no really young kids are listening to this that would like to abuse that, but, uh, I'm more curious maybe to talk about how there's, there's got to be some sort of maybe law jam that occurs with all these report cards coming in.

How do you manage that as a team? Uh, sleeps overrated and awesome. No, um, we, I mean, it's, it's just as much part of our mission. We're all about instant gratification is why this idea existed, right?

Um, Trevor talked up his success to instant gratification and being able to, uh, really piecemeal success. Um, so I mean, we have had tens of thousands of submissions in one day before, but we get through them because we guarantee students that their report cards will be checked within 24 hours. Okay. So it's built into the app in that way.

Certainly. Yeah. Cause I, I feel like if I was a student, I submitted it and four days later, I get this notification of like your report card went in. I might be more disinterested.

So 24 hours is, is manageable and understandable. I feel like for a student, definitely. And actually it's, I mean, I'm a little bit of a dork, but I love just like sitting in front of our portal. And when I see a new one come in, I like answer it right away.

Cause I love it going in like a push notification. Like knowing the student just submitted and gotten a answer right away is really exciting. That's awesome. And I, there's a, there's a real person who's doing that.

It's not all automated, maybe it'll be automated. But as a user, I think there's a certain level of, uh, okay, this is actually going to a person that understands where I'm coming from with my grades. Cause if I'm submitting my grades, I hope I'm proud of my grades. Definitely.

And also, um, we have some creative students and some funny students. Um, we've had students like submit a picture of their dog. So like, we'll write back like really cute dog, but not worth any could do cash and they freak out. Like, oh my God, you guys are really checking this stuff.

And they're like, yeah, so it's, it's funny. I love that. I love that there's a certain level of humanness that's built into the app. Okay.

So I'm sure there's a lot of critics out there that are maybe bashing that this is decentivizing students possibly. What are your answers to those critics? Yeah. Um, I think it's important not only with like, could do's principle, but just in startups in general, if that you could foresee any, um, criticisms to your idea before they happen, almost like a good attorney does in cross-examination.

Um, we wound up reading, um, there's a book by Avicone called Punished by Rewards, um, and Trevor and I mandated it. Like while, while the, the MVP was being built, we need to understand where critics are coming from, uh, before we could just counter back at it. Cause the, the, the butt end of this argument are the students at the end of the day. So I mean, this is, this is something that we take really seriously.

Um, and something to note is kazoo is branded and will always be branded as an and rather than an or when it comes to bridging the gap of opportunity or engagement and education, uh, where in no way, as I said before, I'm going to come in saying we're disrupting education and we're going to motivate all the students and, and save, um, our dropping rates of, um, rankings and math and science and whatever you want to go to, everyone knows the statistics, but the educators, the administrators, they're there every day. They're the ones making the real change. What kazoo does is we recognize an opportunity. The average student, um, 13 to 22 years old checks their phone over 150 times a day.

Now, an issue that we saw was that phones are seen as like a forbidden fruit in education when we really want to utilize it as a tool of opportunity. So why don't we leverage the relationship that students have with their smart homes to engage them in their education? Now, even if they think about their report card or their cognizant of my friend who did well on that test without a pair of sneakers and I got shoelaces. Maybe I'll study next time.

I mean, you can equate it to the, the gold star. Um, when I stopped getting gold stars on my papers, even though I was really happy when I did in grade school, when I stopped in college, I didn't stop studying. The good habits were already in me. Students are naturally inquisitive, but they're motivated in different ways.

Yeah. It sounds like you guys have a very, very, uh, real relationship with your target market that you understand, what their thoughts and their feelings are towards the application and what would make them go back and use it. That it's, it's very, um, tangible to think about certainly and also important to note that, um, students, especially after working with the students in West Philly, they, students don't need to be saved. They don't need all, we're in here to help them and how dare you think you're helping them in this, that they're like, I said, naturally smart, naturally inquisitive, they, what could do focuses on is engagement.

Students think us all the time for rewards and we make a note of it on our Twitter or wherever we interacted with them is you earned this. Thanks for thanking us, but you earned this. This was you, um, so to empower them in that way is really fun. Oh, I imagine it is because kids can be funny and they can be clever in their own way.

So I want to maybe touch on what makes you feel the best about feedback you get from your current users. And how do you, how do you utilize that feedback to improve your product? Um, what makes me feel best? Yeah.

Like, uh, what makes you continue going on? Maybe I should be friends in that way. So because you got to get feedback, you want to keep going. Or maybe because an issue came up, you want to keep going.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's, it's double sided. So what makes me want to keep going and appreciative, especially with our target demographic is that they're brutally honest.

Uh, it's not like we're asking a bunch of our peers or friends, like, you like this, right? Like, what do you think like kids will tell you if they don't like it or I redeem my reward and it took me 10 minutes to get my code. Oh, I'm so sorry that your free code was late, you know, but that's great we needed to be instant. Um, what helps me keep going are the pleasant surprises of the thoughtful reviews we get.

I mean, I don't know about you, but in school, I was really happy when it was a multiple choice test and that short answer, but kids are writing paragraphs about, um, there was a review saying I was able to take my grandfather out to lunch. I got an eye hop gift card from could do. It felt so good that I got to spend time and not cost, or it cost him any money. Another girl emailed us and sent us a picture of her mom grocery shopping and we're like, what is this?

And she saved up for a $100 Walmart gift card, which takes a couple months of engagement and gave it to her mom for groceries. And, um, that was really powerful because we, we get so caught up in functionalities and focusing on retail brands to, to really see and feel what kids are using this for was, was amazing. Wow, that, that's just like leaves a good feeling in my heart, to be honest, because these kids are supporting their family. It doesn't, I mean, there's situations that are occurring that are very sincere, I mean, helping your mom by groceries.

That's a scenario that maybe not everybody experiences, but does occur and they're enabling themselves to do this. It seems so similar to like those who maybe sign up to be an Uber driver, you're making an extra grand a month, but that enables you to pay for your college education. Definitely, definitely. And it's been such a pleasant surprise to see how selfless this generation is.

Uh, are you guys restocking? Lush brand because I need to get my mom a mother's day present. Guys, like what's going on? Like my friend needs a prom dress and I'm helping her save up where's this?

And it's like really funny, um, and great how selfless these kids are. That's incredible. And once again, I'll just reiterate it. I, I can truly see that you guys are understanding your audience at highest level possible that you really get what their incentives are.

Cause you and I, we're both adults. Our incentives are going to be very different than an elementary school student or a high school student or that even when I have a college student, even though we're not too far away from that, um, given our H currently. So not to date ourselves, of course, or anything like that. Um, I want to maybe ask this question and I myself, I grew up as a learning disabled student.

I have ADHD, ADD, and I had it from elementary school, junior high, high school and through college. How does Kudzu work for a student like myself who had all been, I wasn't and a stalwart academic student. I passed my classes, but I was very passionate and certain things. I loved film and I performed at the top of my peak in film class.

But guess what? I got to see in algebra. How do you address those kinds of students? Yeah, um, it's been a lot of fun building the Kudzu application out because we have been exposed to students, not only of different backgrounds, but of learning methods and also you can even break it down to students.

I prefer to contact you via Twitter or email, know that there's so many different preferences and also for the severity of, um, students with learning disabilities or just differences, um, Kudzu has spearheaded it by just, I mean, since we started, we were just saying there's so much more that defines a student and an individual than just their grades. However, just like we have an MVP of functionalities, the easiest way to scale things of that nature, um, grades were universal. So it was a good starting point to reward. Uh, I'd like to share it's a bit of like our roadmap when it comes to it, but currently we're rewarding, um, these students with not only their grades, but we also track their grade average improvement.

So a student that may have a low GPA if they increase it by a couple of points. Um, that's recognized and rewarded on the Kudzu app. We also have the daily SAT and trivia, which ranges in questions, anything from like who won the last Super Bowl to Pythagorean theorem. Um, it's a whole mix of the questions.

And then also we're really excited in our future version, um, to start rewarding for extracurricular activities, as well as community service. Uh, we're already doing a little bit of that, um, unofficially on Twitter. Kids just started, like taking pictures of them and their friends and calling it Kudzu squad goals because we call our user squad with a lot on the, you, um, so we've gotten pictures of like the volleyball team wearing Kudzu t-shirts or like just kids hanging out, like what up, Kudzu squad goals. So we reward kids kids told us that like they got to play the solo in their orchestra.

I mean, like they're tweeting out a brand about one of their proudest moments. So I, I like to say, even though Trevor says it's corny, that we're like this generation's refrigerator, you know, you like stuck your test grade on it. Um, I've used that in your pitches. I really like that sort of symbolism there.

No, Trevor told me it's corny, but I'm going to tell him that you liked it. I think it's great. If I was your investor, I'd be like, that makes sense. All right.

Awesome. Okay. I'm using it. And then it doesn't work.

I'm blaming it like, okay, fair enough, fair enough. I'll, I'll take the brunt of it if it doesn't pan out. So a question that I want in this is, uh, where are, where is your audience? The most active?

So I mean, you've mentioned a number of social media platforms. Are they more on Twitter or are they more on Facebook or are they more Instagram and what strategies are using to work with them in that platform? The engagement is definitely the highest on Twitter. Now I'm not, um, what age group may I ask?

Uh, mostly high schoolers. We have seen some collegiate market. Yeah, every study that I, I started like red, you'll see that Twitter is falling back in this demographic. However, the, the small amount of users that we have that are engaged on Twitter are incredibly engaged when we send out a tweet.

They actually like not only follow us, but subscribe to us. But sometimes we announce three stocks of certain brands on Twitter. Uh, there are call to actions on could do too. Cause we wanted to integrate and organically scale.

So a little engagement hack is when a student like, um, achieve something, let's say they got all their trivia questions, right? There's an opportunity to share on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Um, that's helped us grow organically. Cause even though, um, they might not have the tens of thousands of followers, they'll have all of our target demographic and a couple hundred followers.

And they're spreading the word daily. That goes against any analytical report that I've read about Twitter that. Welcome to good though. Yeah, most, um, high school students are not on Twitter.

They say Twitter, the users are diminishing that they're not gaining as many followers, but hey, maybe there's a, a generation gap. I, I myself am a millennial and I don't use Twitter too often, but I definitely am on Facebook because I was part of that generation and part of Instagram as well, but I completely agree. However, when it comes to brand promotion, um, what was very sobering for me to find out are to this generation followers are like currency. So they may not follow you, but they'll watch you.

So if they want to post something, Twitter is quickly posted and then forgotten because they can fill their feet up. If they post about could do on Instagram or Facebook and Facebook's really losing the demo, but let's say like Instagram, that is like a knock at their coolness. They look like they're promoting a brand. What are you doing?

I don't understand this. It's like a, it's, it's a taboo to do so on Instagram versus on Twitter. I could post about it and people forget it because it's just a quick feed. Wow.

That's really interesting that a high school student actually understands the intricacies of how the, the parameters of a Twitter, meaning that most people aren't searching through everybody else's Twitter feed, but they're looking at their basic feed. So if they do tweet about kudzu, it comes up and it's only there for a momentary period of time. Exactly. Well, Instagram is a little more of an investment for them for whatever reason, whether they understand it.

And many of them do, like you said, or they just got made fun of for it in the past and they don't want to do it again. Such a dork for posting about kudzu on your Instagram. Like that probably is a comment that's been said by some students at some point in time, whatever I'm getting paid. Yeah, I'm getting paid.

Oh, that's the appropriate response. All right. As we come to sort of our conclusion here of our interview, I've got a handful of rapid fire questions for you. So first, who inspires you?

Oh, my parents, my parents, inspire me every day. All right. Okay. And I want to talk about same kind of question.

Who inspires you as a mentor or advocate of what you're doing? Who, um, you know, when you hear the word mentor, you probably think of like someone who's older than you, but I would say that my co-founder really does, inspires me just because we're such different learners. We're such different in the ideation, productization standpoint. It's very inspiring to hear his feedback, even though sometimes we butt heads in the moment, um, I'm inspired daily, even if I'm frustrated with him.

Well, I think you stated it earlier, but you say that like your, your second, your co-founder boyfriend or something like that, that I've heard this from my mentors and advisors that when you start a company, whoever you're starting it with, you're starting a relationship with that person. Well, what was really cool is they say, like, don't go into business with your friends. Um, Trevor and I, like I thought he was a nice guy, but he wasn't my friend. He's from Chicago.

I'm from Pennsylvania. Like we didn't know each other very well, but we formed such a great friendship through this business. So it's a little backwards, but I mean, it has been wonderful. Awesome.

So what are your, like, I know you mentioned earlier, we talked about this earlier about some of your favorite books. What are your top, let's say three books that you recommend to somebody. Oh, top three, most recent, definitely originals by Adam Grant. I would say read that.

And then, um, uh, you know what, um, by invitation only was really good. Um, it's actually from by the co-founders of guilt, um, guilt group.com and, uh, just wonderful tips on like how to build a business, whether it's tech or not, just boots on the ground, it inspired us to get into schools early, um, by invitation only, um, the beginning intro is kind of interesting, but getting the nitty gritty, it's helpful. And then I'm a little biased, but I'm how to build a billion dollar app. Uh, I know his first age, George, I think Grubinski.

Um, if you're not going to read it all the way through, use it as a reference point. He takes all of like the fluff out of it and just like, here's how you build an app. And it basically starts with like, you're probably not going to have a billion dollar app, but here's how to do it. Well, I, I think it's a great book for anybody who's listening that would like to enter the mobile market, read something like that to understand the intricacies of what the mobile market actually is.

Cause it's very different than a lot of their stuff and it's a crowded space. So taking advantage of what everything you can will be very helpful. Certainly. Okay.