Finding Product-Market Fit in the Education Industry

Before founding the company, Chou worked in nonprofits and managed professional development for Providence Public Schools. She and co-founder Chen met at Stanford and first built a Q&A product to help teachers share practices. A recorded user study revealed teachers would not use it, in part because their work left little time to sit and post questions.

With a presentation deadline approaching, Chou and Chen spent one to two weeks interviewing educators and helping in classrooms. They narrowed their ideas to paperwork tools and an app concept, then focused on paperwork because it seemed more likely to become a business. Informed K12 now helps districts move forms online, from permission slips to internal requests and reimbursements.

It was difficult to get teachers to adopt a free permission-slip app or pay for it, and the founders initially struggled to identify the buyer across district departments. Chou sold the first pilot districts with a PowerPoint prototype, after trying outreach to staff including athletic directors. By late 2014 or early 2015, a repeatable process for reaching chief business officials and assistant superintendents signaled stronger product-market fit.

Chou says district relationships matter because local practices vary, even when districts share some common needs. Her team has personally called every customer during outages, and she continues to handle support and contact school office managers when something is not working. She also emphasizes understanding each district’s context and treating privacy and security as priorities for parents.

After Demo Day, the founders spent months pitching before pausing fundraising to focus on product and pilots; Chou says their expanding deck had diluted their story. More than a year later, a prepared set of roughly ten talking points helped them secure an investment over lunch. Looking ahead, she points to district back-office efficiency, budget cuts, and hiring challenges as areas of opportunity.