Launching my business

Everything You Need To Know About Starting Your Own Business is what the flyer said. As a fourth grade teacher, I knew nothing about starting my own business, but an idea had been simmering in my mind, so I took the flyer as a sign. I attended the class presented by our local SBDC and promptly came home and told my husband I was ready to make the leap. Luckily, he was, too.

The next day I dove into developing StarrMatica Learning Systems. StarrMatica provides teachers with educational content designed to enhance the effective use of technology in teaching reading and math in elementary schools. Member teachers and students log into our online site at school and at home to use our virtual manipulatives, practice activities, games and weblinks with interactive whiteboards, LCD projectors and personal computers.

Because of a change in project requirements combined with the programmers severely underbidding the initial project, our costs quickly skyrocketed to 5x’s, then 10x’s, and eventually to 15x’s my initial projections. But, we had invested so much of our personal savings that quitting was not an option. We battened down the hatches, and in 2006, I quit my job to run StarrMatica full time. There was no money to hire help, so since day one, I have run every aspect of my business including scraping together funding, writing content, managing programmers, beta testing, marketing and sales. I have never been so overwhelmed by work, but I’ve also never loved it so much.

To sell subscriptions early on, I would call every elementary school principal for miles along a major highway and ask to stop and share StarrMatica. To be as efficient with time and money as possible, the more appointments I could schedule in a day the better. And my mother drove me from appointment to appointment so I could work on the laptop in the car.

One memorable day I had scheduled eight back-to-back appointments. My 60-year old mother frantically drove me from school to school on back country roads. We would fly up to the front door, and I would roll out, run into the school, meet with the principal and burst back out the school door. Mom would race the car to the door, I’d jump back in, and she would peel away to our next appointment. Thank goodness she’d brought along water and a bag of snacks!

Four years later, I’m still the company’s sole employee, and we still operate on a shoe string budget. I know it is more important than ever to keep our prices low so we can help as many students and teachers as possible. Our subscriber base is growing, we have a 100% renewal rate, and I’m optimistic for future expansions of the site into science and Spanish translation. To this day, Mom and I still make monthly sales trips together. I can’t imagine why she bought me a GPS for Christmas this year….

Advice for others

Wise Advice: When speaking with a fellow teacher about the time and money investment it was going to take to make StarrMatica successful, she shared with me something her father had told her: Your ship can’t come in unless you let it out to sail.

Practical Advice: Harness the power of free web advertising to connect with potential customers by posting videos on Teacher Tube and You Tube and contributing to message boards. Teacher Tube videos alone boosted StarrMatica’s free trial signups from 3 to over 100 per month.