Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an EdTech Company to $10M: Boom Cards CEO Mary Oemig (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In the 2012 to 2018 period, you were moonlighting and being creative with your bootstrapping. Was it just you and Eric?

Mary Oemig: Yes. Starting in 2016, we paid for a developer in Vietnam. We trusted the provider. We felt comfortable with the pricing. They gave us an early discount.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of revenues at that point?

Mary Oemig: Our first net positive revenue year was 2019. We were just under half a million in 2019. That was the first year we could pay ourselves.

Sramana Mitra: What were you selling to generate that revenue?

Mary Oemig: We were uncertain if we could get local angel financing. The investment community here in Seattle is conservative. They are particularly conservative about investing in married couple founders. That’s less true in Silicon Valley.

When we launched, we immediately went out with a paid product. We chose not to do free. We wanted to validate upfront that people were willing to pay for what we created. In the first year, we were merely charging $6 a year. That was to test if people were willing to pay. We gradually ramped up the price over time.

People were paying for two things. They were paying for educational content that they made and sold to each other. They were also paying for memberships. The memberships were for access to unlimited storage of what they create, the ability to sell to each other, and access to the data reports on student performance. We only make those free for up to five students. After that, you had to pay for that resource.

Sramana Mitra: Your clients were all teachers?

Mary Oemig: Yes. We used guerilla marketing. Teachers will get us principals, schools, and districts. They did bring us more teachers. In 2019, we had our first sale to schools.

Sramana Mitra: Was there a particular kind of teacher you were targeting?

Mary Oemig: We serve the full gamut of K12. What we learned is because we had built this on a concept called response-to-intervention, which is very popular in the special ed sector, we were also popular in primary, particularly in learning and beginning math skills. Those students are highly-variable. Teachers need to figure out where a child is and level set them frequently. Students come in with such a range of skills. We give those primary educators the data they need to meet their compliance, reporting, and obligations.

Sramana Mitra: You started off by talking about the gamification platform. Could you elaborate on what that was?

Mary Oemig: We are a very sophisticated PowerPoint. We go beyond PowerPoint to include gamified plays. Our teacher comes in and creates what’s called a Boom Card. You have cards and you have templates.

Then you create interaction types on each page. It might be a drag-and-drop interaction type. It might be multiple-choice with a touch interface. It might be fill-in-the-blank. We also have a mode called Flow Magic which is conditional logic. If a teacher selects the conditional logic mode, they can actually have an incorrect answer taken to a hint page or a reteaching page, and a correct answer takes you to a different place.

Teachers have choices about the type of learning and practice they want to build on our platform. It allows us to create mini-games without hiring a developer. They have come up with some really sophisticated games – things we never imagined. They do this hidden flashlight one where they change the color so that you move the flashlight and it reveals objects underneath. They do feed the monster. They are insanely creative with the platform.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an EdTech Company to $10M: Boom Cards CEO Mary Oemig
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