[MUSIC] >> If you think 10 years from now or students going to be spending more of their time on screens versus today, the answer is a resounding yes. And currently we have this situation where the social platforms and the games are fully optimized for engagement on those screens. And meanwhile, the learning platforms are just not. They're still very boring, they're very single player. And so if we don't do anything about this, what's going to happen is screen time's going to continue going up. And the social apps and the games are going to continue eating up all of that incremental screen time, which they're already doing. That's kind of the kernel of truth that helped me to start take off. And then. [MUSIC] Welcome to Starter Stories, a podcast that explores the stories behind the world's leading education technology companies and education consultancies and the people who created them. In each episode, you'll hear about the grit, the strategies, the wins, the failures, and the serendipity that transpired to take a half-baked idea and bring it to life. Starter Stories is a podcast of enrol of fun, a learning community for enrollment managers and higher education marketers. Explore our other shows like fanatical Fridays and CRM ProV or access creative ideas on how to better your student recruitment campaigns via our videos, blogs, and e-courses at enrolify.org. I'm your host, Zach Busy-Cruz. Enjoy the show. [MUSIC] In just a moment you'll meet Eric Trimer, co-founder and CEO of Takeoff, a brand new social learning app that pays Gen Z to learn within the context of a virtual study all. Growing up in Montreal, Eric always knew he wanted to build something that mattered. Several members of his family were entrepreneurs, including his uncle, who helped create one of the first sustainable cleaning products to really go mainstream. After graduating from the University of Southern California, Eric took a job in banking, thinking it was the right thing to do. But, before too long, that entrepreneurial bug that had bit his grandfather, his uncle, and other family members before him finally made its way to Eric. What if there was a better way to inspire students to learn? Was it possible to incentivize students to spend less time scrolling through TikTok and more time studying for the SAT? Tune in to hear the story of how these questions ultimately inspired Eric to build and launch Takeoff. [MUSIC] All right, Eric, so if I were to be invited to a happy hour with some close family, some friends, some buddies, and if I were to ask them to talk to me about Eric, what do you imagine that they'd say? Well, yeah, first of all, thanks for having me on the pod, dude. Appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, I guess they might say that pretty independent. I've moved around quite a bit. From Canada, originally, I moved all over the world pretty much. I lived in the states for a bit in France and the UK, and all over the place. I guess one thing when you're moving around a lot is that you kind of have to get set up wherever it is you're going and just be comfortable with yourself, traveling with yourself. So I guess that's one thing that they might say. Another thing might be that when I really get into something, I really get into it to the extent that I can't stop talking about it and I probably bore most people with it. But yeah, when I get excited about things, I really like to dive in. And my most recent thing obviously is social learning and facilitating peer-to-peer learning between students. And this is the journey I've been on for the past year plus. And I could definitely see myself playing around in this space for a lot of years to come. When you were growing up, were you moving around a lot because of one of your parents' jobs? Why were you moving around not just to a different house down the street or a different province, but a different country? No, it was actually completely by choice. So when I was in high school, they started running this exchange program, which is kind of weird for high schools. And so I went to go live in Johannesburg for a year, which is kind of crazy. And then I'm from Montreal originally, but then I went to school in the States. I went to go work in London for a bit, did an internship and Brussels, so just by choice, I just really love traveling, seeing what's the same, what's different. And yeah, I've been really lucky to be able to do that. Do you have a spot or a favorite place of the places that you've lived where you're like, hey, if I could live anywhere, and if I had to live anywhere for at least a few years, it would totally be this place. And if so, what's that place? Yeah, definitely Paris. So I lived in Paris. I did an exchange program there. And like, exchange is beautiful, right? Because you get to kind of travel all over the world with a bunch of other exchange students. The work isn't that hard. And you really just get to enjoy and explore where you're at. And yeah, when I was living in Paris, I mean, it was just so awesome. I was at C.L.S.P.O. over there. And I could definitely see myself spending time there. But at the same time, I couldn't see myself working in Paris. It's not like a place to work, in my opinion. That's what America is for. For you to come find your little engine room and put your head down and get to work. And so, yeah, the more that I've traveled, the more I realize. America's where I want to be to kind of start and scale this company. Yeah, yeah. Now it's funny. It's like, I feel like a lot of my buddies who have started their own companies and spend a little bit of time going abroad to just kind of escape sort of like American pop culture. And what they end up saying is like, "Hey, oh my gosh, I was in Berlin. I was in Paris. I was in London." London's actually a little bit different. But I was in the South of France and it was amazing. Beautiful. I got all this inspiration. But nobody works like Americans work. So it's not like a longer term solution if, especially if you're in the startup ecosystem. And really need to thrive off of the energy of people that also want to work really hard. There's just too many distractions is what they say. So, yeah, I mean, that was like a big thing about COVID, right? I mean, it's such like, you know, where I was working in London, it was at this kind of like startup ecosystem hub there called Founders Forum. So they have like startup accelerator, like a seed series A fund. And a bunch of other things and they have all these events. And you know, there's really something to just being surrounded by a bunch of other founders and entrepreneurs. And just kind of like the serendipity that that entails. And that's totally like one of the things that, you know, we kind of lost her in COVID for at least a good part of it was just like, yeah, you could be on the phone with these people. You could be, you know, zoomed with them or whatever, but it's really not the same. And you definitely lose a little bit of that, you know, inspiration and serendipity because of it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I'm always interested in hearing about people's like morning routines, right? So your alarm goes off and what happens next? What time does it go off? And what do you immediately when it does go off? Totally. Yeah, well, like there's, you know, startups are a lot of work, but one of the positive aspects of it is that, you know, you can kind of structure your days however you want. And for me personally, like I'm definitely do my best work like super late at night early into the morning. And so I don't really have an alarm, but I just kind of wake up at around like 10 or 11. And, you know, I would say in terms of a morning routine, like it will vary depending on kind of how, like what my headspace is like during that point in time, like sometimes I'm really good. And what good means is like I'll wake up, I'll work out, you know, I'll like do a quick meditation, I'll do a little bit of reading. And then you know, get my like my right and get on with the day. But then sometimes, you know, when things are getting a little chaotic, I'm a little stressed or something like that. I'll be bad. And you know, you'll just wake up to your phone and like check emails, like check Twitter, whatever. And then that just kind of sets you off on the wrong path of the day. But it depends. I'm not going to stay sitting here and say like, you know, I have it all figured out, but yeah, it depends. Is there a like on the days when you're on the good days, right? Is there anything different about like what you did the night before that like led up to it being a good day? Like did you go to bed?
earlier at a particular time or is like, is there any sort of like rhythm or pattern to like waking up and it being one of those, hey, I'm going to read, I'm going to meditate, I'm going to like kickstart my day with a nice workout. Have you been able to sort of associate that with any sort of behavior the night before or not particularly? Yeah, I guess like, you know, for me, I'm kind of like a lazy biohacker. Like, you know what these biohacker people that have all these like body hacks and whatever and they do, they have all these systems and whatever. It's like, I'm super interested in what they have to say and like, I believe them. But then I never actually followed through and kind of like run through the process. So yeah, like I'm sometimes I'm pretty structured, but most of the time not really. I mean, I guess, you know, obviously like if you get a good night's sleep, you're going to have a better day, but yeah, I can't really see any rhyme or reason to it. It just kind of happens when it happens. Yeah. Yeah. And you got to, when it does happen, you optimize it, make the most of it. And when you don't, you know, when it doesn't happen, you've still gone with the day and hope that tomorrow's more of a good day. Yeah. So talk to us about the first job you ever wanted to have. Like where, how old were you when you were like, oh, I want to do this thing. And I, you know, quote unquote, grow up. Do you remember sort of what that job was and really sort of what inspired your, your, your, you know, you're reasoning for wanting to pursue that particular job. Yeah. You know, I guess like this is common with a lot of entrepreneurs, but I never really wanted a job. Like I always just imagine myself like having a job and doing something that kind of mattered that had like a positive impact on the world and, you know, doing, you know, big things, right? But I never really fully visualize like what that would be or like, you know, how to get from like a to B like as in, you know, I'm here and like how am I going to get there, right? And so for a long time, you know, I was just, I was just envisioning that future, but without understanding how to get there. And, you know, that's why, you know, when I stumbled onto this problem, you know, that's so many students around the world are facing, which is really the core behind take off and what we're doing. You know, I was so keen to jump in because I was like, this is, you know, what I can really devote my, you know, energy and like my willpower to and and have it be something that that actually matters at the end of the day. So yeah, I can't really say that I envisioned myself having like this perfect job or whatever. I think a mark of a really good entrepreneur typically is that you're not a really good employee. Yeah. I don't, I think that's definitely the case for myself. Did you, when you were going to college, you sort of thought about school, was there, was there a particular like, you know, in high school, when people are talking, oh, yeah, I'm going to go to the school. I think I want to do this thing. This is the kind of, you know, career at least I wanted. Was there any sort of like trajectory there in your mind or not really? Yeah. Well, I always knew that I wanted to work like with startups and startups just because, you know, I like to take like a macro lens on things. And if you think about, you know, where like which kind of area of the economy and like where people are working is actually catalyzing change. And for the most part, you know, positive change, definitely startups, right? It's not working for, you know, like a fortune 500 company or whatever or or doing any of that. I've always been, you know, keen to go down that route. But yeah, I mean, part of, you know, the bad thing about college today, at least a lot of them, is that so many people like just track themselves from from day one, you know, like, so it's like in high school, your mission is to get into like a top 20 college. And then when you're a college, you're trying to get to like a top five, like investment bank or top five consulting. And it's just these artificial tracks that people set for themselves. And to a certain extent, I guess I was kind of taken in by that. I was like, oh, I gotta go do, you know, like the basic stuff, right? Before I can actually do anything that I want to do. And, you know, that's why I went to go work at a bank after school partially, although it was a startup bank. So it's kind of like a blend of those two things. But yeah, that was, I was never fully taken in by it. How did your parents talk about higher education growing up? Like was it a foregone conclusion that you would go to college? How did they talk about what life after high school would look like for you if they talked about it at all? Yeah. Yeah. So education was a big, big thing in my family. And I guess it was kind of a foregone conclusion. You know, that just tends to be the case, right? When your parents and your grandparents went to college, like, yeah, you're probably going to go to college. So it was really important to my family. But I guess at the same time in terms of, you know, education, I was really lucky enough to grow up in a situation where that was also the case for like my peers, like my friends, my classmates, whatever. You know, I think that in terms of education in general, like if we talk about improving education or whatever, a lot of people like to talk about school funding or teachers or things like that, right? Yeah. And then it goes undiscussed or like the students that you surround yourself with. Like this is massive in your peer groups, right? Like do your friends and classmates actually care about school and learning, you know, do they spark your curiosity? Do they like, is it a good thing to be smart in school or like do you get made fun of? Right? These are, these are kind of massive drivers for like education outcomes. And you know, when I think about takeoff, like this is one of the areas that I think we can have a really big impact because, you know, a little, like a little known, you know, fact is that most students around the world, but certainly like around the country are learning pretty much the same things at pretty much the same time. And you know, right now, like there's no real way for them to connect with each other based on that fact, right? So it's like, for example, like when I was in school, like I was pretty interested in philosophy, right? And none of my friends were, you know, like, but you know, with the internet and with, you know, hopefully take off, you'll be able to find, you know, other students just like you around the country who can like help, you know, spark and like nurture that curiosity with you, right? And I think that's really important is like peer-to-peer learning, you know, because that's, you know, a lot of what we do as humans is through mimicry, like we like to mimic what we see around us. And if you're not seeing, you know, other motivated students around you, like you're probably going to mimic that, mimic that too, to one extent or another. We'll jump right back into the show after a quick message from this week's sponsor. Do you remember what your college dorm room looked like during finals week? Or how about your toddler's toy room after a play day? If you're like most of us, both environments were a total chaotic disaster, 99% of the time. 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If you're in a more privileged living situation and more privileged household and you go to a nice private school in Manhattan and you're learning something, maybe you're taking courses taught by faculty members, taught by teachers that are a little bit better educated than teachers who are in an inner-city situation where they didn't have the resources that these teachers have to be able to teach their students the things that they're teaching. But to your point, you're still learning more or less the same things. You might be learning at a different rate. You might be learning in different contexts, but more or less the subject matter is consistent. Now what you could do through something like take off is you have a wealthier kid from a private school in Manhattan being able to connect with a
less privileged kid, an underprivileged kid in inner city, Chicago, and being able to collaborate on the same kind of subject matter, the same kind of like a learning game or whatever it is, right? And that's like a really, I think interesting part of the conversation as it pertains to equity in schools that not enough people are talking about. Well, when you think about equity and education, there's a lot of promise for edtech to address that. And that's always been like the hope and the promise of edtech is to say, you used to have one teacher talking to 20 students in the classroom, and now you have the internet, now you can scale that to 20 million, right? Like, one to 20 million. And so you can see a lot of activity around, in edtech, around, you know, scaling like really good content, right? Or scaling tutoring services, you know, to close the gap there because obviously, you know, certain students have much more opportunities for like special learning versus others. But yeah, you know, a big thing that I've realized is what you don't hear a lot about is closing the kind of like peer group, you know, education, equity gap, right? And it's like if you, it's like, yeah, you could kind of, you know, hear a lecture from like a really great teacher. But first of all, like, that's not going to replicate the experience in a one to one kind of way. And second of all, such a huge part of class is, you know, who you're in the classroom with like who's sitting in front of you, who's sitting next to you, who are you in the, who are you studying with like after school? And yeah, no one, you know, to my knowledge has really given a good shot at trying to solve for that. And I think that's just like a massive missed opportunity there. Absolutely. Well, um, hey, I guess that's the reason takeoff exists, right? And I want to, I want to talk a little bit more. Yeah, we're kind of back. We're kind of backing into it. Yeah. I want to talk all about sort of the, the origin story of takeoff in just a second. But couple of just other questions about you, you know, before, before founding takeoff, like you went to USC for school. Um, and then afterwards you went to work at this, you know, startup bank that you've referred to is called Silicon Valley bank. And then you went and worked at founders intelligence, um, all before eventually founding takeoff. So can you just talk about your, your time at Silicon Valley bank and then founders intelligence? And were there any particular lessons or, um, you know, opportunities that you had and are alarmed in those contacts that have helped shaped the way that you think about either takeoff, think about business in general, think about what it means to work in startups a little more generally. Yeah, totally. So I guess what attracted me to both of those experiences was their closeness to the startup ecosystem, you know, kind of playing like a, uh, you know, like a connector role, uh, in that ecosystem. And you know, for me, like I always knew that I wanted to build a startup, but I guess I was always a bit self conscious, right? There's always that self consciousness like, can I actually do this? Will I actually succeed or and all of that? And, you know, one thing I think is that students today, they, there's this thing that there's this idea that they've internalized a bit too much, which is that, you know, we live in this like hyper-globalized world, right? With billions of people. So there has to be someone smarter than you. And specifically, there has to be someone smarter than you with the same ideas you. Like I think this is just like a concept that students in America and probably all of the world have just internalized to a really high degree. And, you know, it's just like this unproductive like super hyper kind of competition-focused mindset. And so I guess the cool thing from both those experiences was I was able to talk to a lot of entrepreneurs who like did make that jump, who were doing things, right? And those are both of those jobs. And, you know, it was this, and the main takeaway for me was, you know, one, the vast majority of people aren't going to strike out and do their own thing. Like they're just not. They're not going to go and try out, you know, drastically new things. And they like the security too much. And then, too, it's this idea that, you know, building startups isn't a zero-sum game. Like you're not fighting over like the same pieces of the same pie. You're like actually actively trying to grow the pie, right? And so yeah, that was big for me just to know that, you know, to kind of like de-internalize that concept around, you know, hyper competition. Yeah, that's super, super interesting and glad that you that you brought that up because you're right. I don't think that there's enough people talking, especially to young aspiring entrepreneurs that, hey, any, and even to your point, even if there is something that already exists, that more, you know, is similar to the idea that this individual has. It doesn't mean that it's, it can't be disrupted. It doesn't mean that there isn't more opportunity in the market for a alternative solution. And it certainly doesn't even mean that the startup as it is is functioning in the way that it needs to function in order to achieve any sort of meaningful success. And I feel like people are very quick to, they have an idea, they do, you know, a couple Google searches, they stumble upon some app that kind of looks like what they're thinking about. Exactly. They see that they're like, oh, never mind. Never mind, you know. Yeah, I can't do it. Yeah, exactly. That's, I think that's such a big thing, you know, and I think part of it stems from like, you know, since this is kind of a college oriented podcast, like I think a lot of it stems from like college applications, right? Like this is a big moment for students where they are, you know, like competing against students all over the world to get like a very limited number of spots. And it kind of just makes you think like, who am I in comparison to the like millions and millions of students, like all over the world, you know, that are probably smarter than me and probably better than me. And yeah, I think you know, I just think that's kind of just a broadly negative thing that's happening where people think this way. I certainly used to think that way as well. Yeah, I mean, you know, even if there if there is somebody out there that is, you know, smarter and better than you at a particular thing to your earlier point, it doesn't necessarily mean they're, you know, brave enough to leave their, you know, nice job where they're making good money. They've got, you know, decent stock options. It's like the amount just because they might actually be more capable or they might actually be more intelligent in a particular arena doesn't mean that they, you know, you know, to put it frank, like have the balls to leave that and go tackle this idea, right? So you might be slightly less intelligent, slightly less qualified, at least at face value. But if you've, you know, if you've got if you've if you've got the balls to go and do this, that in many cases ends up proving to be enough. Anyhow, yeah, we, I think we've driven this point home. When I'm curious about your first business idea, right? Like so you said, hey, I never really like how to particular job in mind. You were pretty entrepreneurial from the start. It sounds like you had a good education. You were around people that challenged you that enjoyed school more or less. Where what was the very first idea that you ever had that maybe wasn't even like fully flushed out, but like a half baked business idea. Was it takeoff or was it was it something previous to take off? Yeah, totally. Yeah, so you know, I grew up in kind of, I guess you can call it like a family of entrepreneurs like my cousin, my grandfather, like a lot of people in my family were entrepreneurs. You know, and one of the big realizations for me was, you know, my uncle, for example, like started this one of the first like green cleaning products companies in America like essentially took that industry forward in terms of, you know, sustainable products like at least 10 years with what they did in terms of the industry. And, you know, growing up seeing that happen, it's pretty impactful because you're like, hey, you know, sometimes you think that you have to choose between, you know, like the noble path, the right noble path if you want to do something like good the world and the kind of like financial outcome path, right? Yeah. And, you know, so this is a really cool opportunity to see that like, hey, you don't actually have to choose like there's plenty of opportunities to, you know, do things that are, you know, net like obviously net positive on the world, but, you know, that also are big business opportunities, you know what I mean? And maybe businesses is actually the best way in those spaces to like bring about those changes. So, you know, that was big for me. And, you know, for me, when I was thinking about, you know, what I wanted to do, you know, as you said, like education was big for me growing up and, you know, I was also able to see, you know, at a young age, the kind of discrepancies in education between, you know, different areas and people with different opportunities. So, that was really interesting for me. So, like the first business, I guess you can't really call it a business. It was more like social impact entrepreneurship, I guess. Yeah. Was, like me and my friends in high school, we went to this place in Belize during the summer to do some community service. And we noticed that like the school kid, the kids were out of school in the center.
summer and the parents were all working. So like a lot of bad things were happening. They were getting into trouble. They were getting into like crime and these other things. And so, you know what, me and my friends set out to do was to kind of create this like free educational summer camp for them. You know that their parents were obviously thrilled about. And just giving them something that's like actually productive and valuable for them to do, you know, instead of, you know, nothing, which is what it currently was. So that's what we did. And that was like the first thing that, I guess you could say I started on my own. And obviously super rewarding and whatever. And so we ran that for a few summers. You know, I also started some things in college, but nothing to like write home about. But what were they though? At a curiosity, what were they? A couple of them. Yeah, I mean, yeah, like, you know, we started like the classic, you know, college starting startup idea, which is like a daily deals thing for college students. So we tried to do that. We did what we got like 50 restaurants in the, in the USC area on board and, and we did some things there. But you know, that's just like a pretty tough business and also like hard to scale. So we ultimately gave up on that one. But yeah, I've always been thinking about, you know, startup ideas. I mean, now, you know, one of the things like when you really dive into spaces, you know, now all of my startup ideas like have to do with social learning because it's such like a green field space. But I used to be thinking about ideas like all over the place. But right now it's, it's all just kind of social learning because I really do believe that this is the future of online learning and there really is like, like what is, like what is there right now for social learning online? I mean, there's not really that much. So I think there's like a whole like wide breadth of experiences that we can unlock if we keep working out it. Yeah, and Eric, I think this is an awesome segue into just helping our listeners understand like what is social learning? Like for folks who are like, I think I kind of have an idea of what this is. This is like the intersection of social media and online learning. Like talk to us a little bit about like what social learning is. And then, you know, what were the events that ultimately led up to you deciding to go all in on this idea of takeoff? Yeah, totally. So I'll just the second question first, you know, the idea of a takeoff really spawned out of this conversation I had with my cousin during the pandemic. And you know, what he was describing to me, I just asked him how school was, right? I think really opened up, which was kind of strange on its own. And he was just telling me kind of how frustrated and anxious he was because, you know, obviously school had gone fully remote. Yeah. He's learning everything on his screen now. And like what's also on those screens, you know, there's TikTok, there's Netflix, there's Fortnite, whatever. And so this was just like really affecting his, you know, productivity as a student is ability to focus, is ability to concentrate and learn, right? And, you know, this was like a big moment for me because I was like, huh, like, yeah, I guess you could say that the pandemic's an outlier in terms of like screen time. But, you know, if you think 10 years from now or students going to be spending more of their time on screens versus today, like the answer is like a resounding yes. And, you know, currently we have this situation where the social platforms and the games are like fully optimized for engagement on those screens. And meanwhile, the learning platforms are just not, right? They're like still very boring, they're very single player. And so, you know, if we don't do anything about this, what's going to happen is like screen time's going to continue going up. I think, you know, the recent data is that like, students are spending four and a half hours on social media day. I mean, that's like 25% of their waking hours, I mean, just insane. And not to bash social media or anything, you know, there's some positive aspects to it. But, you know, without a doubt, it prevents students from like studying and learning, right? Which is, you know, really important for them and to them, like at this stage. So, you know, that's kind of the kernel of truth that, you know, helped me to start take off. And then, you know, I would say, as I looked into this space, I kept hearing about this thing called like the study web, you know, from my conversations with students. And I was like, you know, what's going on here? Like, what is this? Because I was learning about all these really weird kind of user student behaviors that I had never heard about before. Like, there's this whole thing on YouTube called study with me. I don't know, have you ever heard about this? - No, no, tell us about it. - So, you know, there's this whole thing on YouTube, it's like a massive trend where someone will just live stream themselves like studying. And they'll have 50,000, 100,000, like 200,000 people just studying by watching them study, right? - Huh. - Yeah. - You know, there's these, it's kind of crazy, right? It's kind of like, you know, at first when people were seeing people watch other people play video games, all the way to the end of the school. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's kind of like a similar thing. You know, then I was looking into this like, discord study groups, these are massive, you know, this is where you, you know, find study groups and help each other with homework and all of that, all of that stuff. And these are massive too. There's Reddit learning communities, there's like learning content on TikTok, which is absolutely massive. And, you know, so I was looking at all this, I was like, trying to figure out what's going on here, like, what should this all tell me? And, you know, when you take this step back, what I realized was, you know, what these students are actually trying to do right now is because is that they're trying to essentially, like organically recreate a virtual study hall, right? On the internet, because like, think about it, like what goes on in an actual study hall, like an IRL study hall. It's like, you're in a room together and you're getting motivated to study and to keep focusing because you're seeing other people that are motivated to keep focusing, right? So it's that whole mimicry thing that we talked about, you know, you have like study buddies so that when you get tripped up on a question or you don't understand something, you could like learn from them and you can also learn by teaching them, right? Because that's like the really effective way to learn as well. You know, you're making study materials together. You are, you know, quizzing each other with flashcards and, you know, other fun games. And then also, you know, a really important part is, you know, you'll work for an hour or two hours and then you guys will just take a break and chill and, you know, mess around a little bit. But doing that and still like, you know, we're gonna do this for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, but then we're gonna get back to work versus, you know, I'm gonna start scrolling, take talk to chill. And then an hour later, I'm like, what the hell have I been doing for the past hour? So, you know, when I think about social learning as it relates to take off, like what we're really trying to do is to, you know, give these students what they're already kind of organically cobbling together on their own, which is like a purpose built, you know, all in one virtual study hall experience, which really doesn't exist right now. - I love that positioning and it just, it makes so much sense in light of just everything that we've all been through over the past, you know, going on two years now. What I'm curious about is how, from this, you had this idea of like, okay, what does it look like to try and recreate a study hall like experience but fully virtually? What happens next? Like, how do you go from taking this like, very general thought and idea and actually, you know, bringing it to life in the form of an app? Like walk us through sort of a couple of like, the more, I guess like pivotal moments on the journey from idea conception to actual, you know, app creation. - Totally. Yeah, so when I first had that conversation with my cousin that got me down this road, that was like definitely a catalyst for me. And I'm a pretty measured person, so I was like, I'm not just gonna jump into this, you know, just to start thinking about it. So I'm gonna do some like, research first, right? And so what I did was I talked to a bunch of students, you know, his friends just random people on Reddit and the internet, you know, scheduled these calls and try to like understand this problem and what they were doing about it. And, you know, that was really big because that's where I learned about the study web and, you know, that's where, like, the lines for this idea really started getting colored in. And so, you know, once I was really confident in the extent to which this was like a big problem, you know, that's when I was like, okay, time to actually build something, but, you know, I don't know how to build anything. So, you know, that's when I went on this, like, pretty long journey to find a co-founder who, like, shared this passion with me and would be able to kind of help bring it to light, like, you know, in tandem with me. And took a long time. - Yeah. - You know, this is, you know, I think a lot of founders will say this, you know, the hardest thing is finding the right partner 'cause this is like, you know, a long-term engagement. I mean, we've been working, my co-founder, Kristoff and I have been working together for like, a year at this point. And we're still going strong. But yeah, it's, so yeah, so I spent a bunch of time trying to find a co-founder. And you know, my first thing was to like plug into the community that I was already a part of and see what was going on there. And I interviewed a bunch of people and I just wasn't really like stoked on any of them. And I was kind of feeling down on myself, like,
Damn, am I ever going to get built on the, am I ever going to be able to build this? Like, am I ever going to be able to try this? You know, because I couldn't find the right person. And then one of my friends who's an entrepreneur as well, was like, "Hey, you know what you should do? You should just make a Reddit post and just send it out because like, what's the worst that could happen?" And I was like, "Man, that's so stupid. Like I'm not going to find my co-founder on Reddit." But, you know, literally the first response is my co-founder, Chris, off. - No way. - And a month, yeah, literally the first response. And a month later, I would literally, so he's from a small town in Austria called Kloginfort. And literally a month later, like right before Levantin was about to go on lockdown again, I like took a flight to Kloginfort and I went to go live with him for a month and, yeah. - Wow. - Kind of crazy. Yeah, yeah. - That's insane. And what was, like, was he, I'm assuming he was an engineer. Like, he was, he built take off his, kind of what I'm assuming here. - Yeah, so he's like my technical co-founder. - Yeah. - And he's also terrific designer. I mean, he's a serial entrepreneur. He started a bunch of things. He, like, he started his first company when he was 17 and he sold it when he was 19. And by the way, this is from like a small town in Austria. This is not in like Silicon Valley, right? - Yeah. - So he's a hustler. He's a grinder and, yeah, he can kind of do everything. And yeah, certainly without him, like, you know, we, we wouldn't have been able to get as far as we have so far. - So you fly to Austria. You bump up with him for a month. You guys, what, you work on sort of like the, the alpha of, of takeoff. Like, what, what is sort of the timeline here from that month to when you actually get something somewhat functional on the App Store? - Yeah, totally. So, you know, we work pretty fast. I can't believe how fast we get it. So I think I went out there in like November of last year. And that's when we started work. And by the way, I was still working on my job at this point, but, you know, because of the pandemic, like you could, you know, you could just kind of work from anywhere, which is cool. But yeah, I was still working part time. Like I was still working on takeoff part time at that point. - Yeah. - But, and so was Christoff. But like, we were both still kind of, you know, grinding on this like eight, 10 hours a day behind the scenes. And yeah, so we were able to put out an alpha for that in like two, two and a half months. So really early 2021. And yeah, I mean, it was like a lot of long nights, but, you know, we got like a really great response from our early users. They're super passionate about it. And just kind of, you know, just gave us the like confidence to keep going. You know, that's, that's all, that's another thing. It's like whenever there's like a kind of tricky time or a tricky kind of obstacle in the way. You know, like all it takes is like one student hitting me up and being like, Hey, like I just had, you know, I took my SAT and like you guys helped me like score better, you know what I mean? Or like, you know, I used to think learning had to suck. And like this is actually fun. Like what, how did you guys do that? So whenever you hear something like that, it just kind of gives you the motivation to keep going. - Yeah, that's, that's incredible. Now, did you guys, have you been bootstrapping this the whole time? Like, have you guys raised any money yet? - Yeah, we raised a couple hundred thousand in a round like May of last year. And we're actually in the process of raising our seed round right now. - Okay. - So fun stuff. - What, I have to ask because, you know, this is one of the questions that I feel like we could feedback on from folks is like, what a lot of times you find founders who are, you know, really great idea people or on the technical front, right, incredible builders, right? And you can have, you know, you can be a really dynamic person, you can be a great builder, you can also, you know, be a shitty fundraiser, right? Like, and asking people for money is really different than asking people to sort of like, you know, buy into an idea, right? Or to, you know, validate an idea that you might have. So, did fundraising like come just naturally to you? Like, have you, is there anything that you've like, learned along the way that's helped you become better at it? I know that it's still early, but, you know, you had to ask some people for money. So, like, how did that go? And any sort of like pro tips you have that you could impart on any, you know, aspiring entrepreneurs that might be listening to this? - Totally. Yeah, well, I'll just say this, like, if you're building a tech startup and you can't actually build it and you can't like actually raise money for it, you know, then what's your point to the operation? But, I wouldn't say-- - Thank you, you should be, go do something else, yeah. - Yeah, no, I'm just joking, obviously, but, yeah, I wouldn't say I'm an expert at fundraising, but, you know, I have some experience with it now. What I would say, like, in terms of like, pro tips or whatever, is what I've learned is, you know, I used to think that, like, fundraising was all about, you know, what you're building and your vision or whatever, but like, especially at the early stages, it's so much more actually just about you, right? And that was kind of a hard thing for me because I don't really like talking about myself. Not a lot of people do, but really learning how to kind of position yourself to investors because, look, I mean, you're asking people to put hundreds of thousands, like millions of dollars, you know, into your, like, tiny team of like three or four people. - Yeah. - You know, there's no company there. Like, there's just you and your co-founders, right? And so it's like, if you can't sell people on you and your co-founders, like, they don't care about, you know, like that you're gonna create, you know, I don't know, like some amazing company, whatever, it's like they need to trust that you're gonna be actually able to do it. Or so then, oh, I've thought through this idea, you know, really, really well. So that's one thing. I guess another thing I've learned is that it's really important to like, package, you know, what you're trying to say about your product and your company, your vision, into like a couple bite size, like compelling hooks that are easily regurgitated because like, the startup game is, the fundraising game is like, they're very social game for investors, they socialize it with their friends, with their colleagues, with people with different funds. And so, you know, they don't have, if they say, oh, I got something cool to show you, and then they're like, what is it? And they don't, and you don't give them that like, little hook that they can just regurgitate, and it makes a lot of sense. You know, in our case, like, I think it's this whole virtual study hall concept. - Yeah. - Then, you know, they're not gonna be able to socialize it, and then you're just not gonna get as much interest in it, right? - Yeah, I'd say those are probably the two biggest things that I've learned. - Yeah, and you hear people, you know, saying things like, oh, it's like Uber, but for blah, or it's like Airbnb, you know, for a while, right? And those little sort of like, easy to remember, easy to sort of like regurgitate, like, bite sized, you know, explanations of what you're building, while certainly there are limitations to it, like, it does help. It helps your average person be able to sort of like, conceptualize, oh, okay, like, this is what this thing actually is. - Totally. But at the same time, if you do it wrong, like, if you give one of those like, X for Y things, but it's like, you know, X is a failed company, or like, why doesn't make sense in terms of that industry? Like, that'll actually probably hurt you more than anything, right? So it's like, yeah, that's why it's so important to kind of think about like, you know, the person walking from this conversation, like, what are like the three or four things that they're actually gonna walk away with, making sure that those are like really solid. - Yeah, yeah. Couple final questions for you, man. So first off, walk us through, this is my favorite question I ask everyone on the show, is like, walk us through a no shit moment, right? Like a time when I know that you're still early on here, right? Like, you just, you guys, you were in Austria, like a year ago this time, right? - Yeah. - And now, you know, you guys have had over what, 75,000, close 100,000 downloads of the app. So like, I mean, you're still really early, but like, awesome, positive momentum kind of going on right now. But walk us through like, at a no shit moment, when you're just like, is this idea even gonna work? And then like, how did you, how did you like, champion through sort of like that doubt? - Yeah, I'll tell you one from like, literally two weeks ago. - A lot of it. - So, yeah, we just, we did this big relaunch for the product and, you know, started going really, really well. You know, we went from, you know, like, 2000 users to like, 50,000 users in three weeks, you know, and we were continuing to grow. And, and so we started fundraising because like, that's obviously a good time to start fundraising. And so, you know, just as this was happening, like, we just reached like our peak users for like that week. And I was on the phone with an investor and he was like, oh, the game's about to start, you know, like, let's play together, like, let's test out the product. And it was like, that game while I was on the phone with this investor, you know, that the, we started running into these like, scaling challenges and like, the app actually crashed. - Oh, God. - Yeah. And so literally the past two weeks, you know, in the middle of like this whole fundraising thing, we've just been dealing with like, these really tricky scaling challenges due to, you know, some of our third party providers or whatever, we don't need to get into like the technical details. But, yeah, I mean, you know, just, it's just funny 'cause it's like, you know, when things aren't growing, you got problems and then when things grow too fast, you're problems like, there's always gonna be problems. And so like, the most important thing is just to like, keep a cool head or whatever and like, take a step back. And the most important thing, like, you know, at one point, you know, me and my team were like, we're all like really on edge, right? Because, you know, like, we did the first part really well and now things were starting to break and it was causing all these repercussions. But, you know, just being like, hey guys, like, we're gonna figure this out. We got all the time in the world. No one else is doing anything interesting here. So,
you know, let's, yeah, let's just kind of take a, take a deep breath and just keep kind of keep going. - Yeah, that is, that's definitely a no shit moment. But, no, excited to hear how you guys, how you guys work through that. Last question for you, and then I'll let you go because I know that you're competing with one of your investors right after this. So, last question, just around any advice you'd give to somebody who's tuning in right now, they're an aspiring Ed Tech entrepreneur, they wanna build something cool in the space, but they aren't sure exactly how to get started, maybe they have an idea and that's pretty much it. What advice based off of your journey thus far would you impart on them with respect to either how to build a team, how to find a co-founder, or you know, pick any other category of just a quick little bit of advice that you would, that you'd share with them before we sign off. - Yeah, yeah, I would just say like, the key of startups is momentum, right? And like, the way that momentum starts is that you actually just start doing something. So, it's like you can spend, you know, as much time in the world in the like, I guess you can call it like the IDMAs, right? Where you're saying this might be an interesting idea or that might be an interesting idea. And you're trying to like validate it like it's some science experiment or whatever. But like if you're ever gonna do anything, you just need to, you know, get enough conviction in yourself. And then, you know, some general kind of notion of what you're gonna do and just start doing something there and collecting like real world feedback or whatever. And this is especially true if you haven't done anything, you know, you haven't built a product yet in your life or you haven't done something like that. Such a big difference between, you know, once you've done that to, you know, once, you know, boofs to like before you've done that, right? So, I would say the biggest thing is just like, you know, get started and you know, might not work out or whatever, but like literally the amount that you learn from just starting anything and actually giving it like a good try is, you know, incomparable to like what you could do anywhere else. Like it's incomparable to what you could learn in school, to what you could learn, you know, it's something company or whatever. So I would just say, you know, just get started. - Love it. Well, thank you, sir, for your time. Best of luck to you and the takeoff team and we'll have links to your all's app, your email, social handles, anything else you might want to drop in. So if you're listening to this and you want to learn a little bit more about Eric and take off and what they're building, just scroll down to the show notes and click on through to the relevant links and connect with them. But thank you so much, man, for taking some time to come in and share your story with us. Best of luck as you guys go in fundraise and we're gonna be rooting for you. - Thanks, dude. Yeah, great shadow. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Starter Stories. Starter Stories is brought to you by Enrollify, a learning community for enrollment managers and higher ed marketers. Enrollify was built to empower enrollment marketers with the ideas, the strategies and the tools that they need to optimize the resources that they do have to generate the results that they need. You can explore our other podcasts or sign up for one of our new letters or watch an episode of "FriDias" or we leave a video segment at enrollify.org. Oh, and don't forget to hit that subscribe button or leave us a review. And if you like what we're about, share this content with a friend. Finally, if you know what founder in the ed tech or education consulting space that you think we should have on this show, please send me an email directly at zack. That's
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