Ken Babcock - Leaving Harvard to Bet On Yourself

Ken Babcock, along with his 2 co-founders, dropped out of Harvard Business School during the pandemic to launch their business, Tango, a SaaS company that helps users create beautiful step-by-step tutorials of any digital process without the performance art of video recordings. As a graduate student at Harvard Business School with a keen interest in what makes high performing teams tick, Ken and his friends honed in on documentation as a key challenge affecting team performance. Because documentation is something people don’t like to do, given the amount of time it takes and how quickly it can become out of date, Ken’s group set out to create a solution to lower the barrier to creating documentation. Today, their SaaS solution, Tango, has over 200,000 users.  In this episode, Ken tells us about the decision to drop out of Harvard to pursue his business idea, how they funded the business, their user-centric approach to growth, and the elements that have led to their success. Ken explains how Tango works to document processes and how it’s being used with different clients.  Ken explains why he and his co-founders pursued funding early on and one aspect that made their business especially attractive to investors.  Next, he shares the one steadfast focus that has helped them drive the company forward and build an award-winning product, and how their innovation efforts are driven by using data to gather customer feedback.Finally, Ken discusses what it’s like to work with co-founders and the culture they’ve established that has been key to their success. He also mentions how well TikTok has worked for Tango in attracting customers, the exciting new things they are developing, and the difference between what he learned in business school compared to what he's experienced in the real world of starting a business.Skip to Topics:1:59 - How an interest in team performance led to identifying a problem to solve6:47 - Description of the solution they developed & how it works7:44 - Different use cases for the Tango product9:50 - The biggest roadblock for people to do documentation11:49 - Making the decision to drop out of Harvard to pursue the business12:28 - How the pandemic exposed an urgent need for Tango’s solution14:00 - Securing funding to start the business14:49 - The tactic that helped Tango secure funding16:03 - The key ingredient that has contributed to the company’s progress17:49 - The data-driven approach they take to innovation20:46 - What it takes to establish a good working relationship with co-founders25:19 - A user and product-led approach to growth  28:22 - Using a top of funnel sales strategy29:24 - Their success using TikTok to attract customers32:56 - Tango’s big mission and the cool things Tango is working on for the future 36:24 - What Ken says is different about what you learn in business school vs. what’s real about running a businessFind Ken  at:Website: https://www.tango.us/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenbabcock/Visit Stephanie at: https://stephaniehayes.biz/Follow me on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | TwitterSupport the show