How EduMESS Reached $25K ARR and 60 Schools in 2022 with K12 Software Training (Interview with CEO Chike Okoli)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Edumess.com launched back in 2021. They're doing $2,500 per month in revenue right now by helping 60 schools educate their students on how to do software development. He's trained thousands of students and is now codifying that in his platform. Looking to raise 135,000 right now at a 2,000,000 cap. We'll see if it happens, 10 people on the team. Hey folks, my guest today is Chike Okoli. He's got twelve plus years experience as a software developer and trained

00:26over 500 students in software development. He's now building edumess.com as a training platform. Okay. Chike, you ready to take us to the top?

Chike Okoli

00:35>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

00:36Good to have you.

Chike Okoli

00:37>> Good to be here. I'm glad to be here.

Who Pays for EduMESS

Nathan Latka

00:39You bet. So who is paying for edumess? Is it the students or employers or somebody else?

Chike Okoli

00:45>> Okay. So employers basically are paying for edumess, k 12 schools, and they were expanding to accommodate coaches and traditional institutions who go who train our clients in the business of educating others. So basically, edumess is a software that helps educators of all sizes manage all sizes of school, simplify their work processes, and we implemented AI to help make these processes very seamless.

Pricing Model per School

Nathan Latka

01:14And so what does this what does a school pay on average per month to use your training program?

Chike Okoli

01:20>> Okay. It ranges from from $48 to $1,200. And so our model is such that, okay, when we come to a school for basically the K-twelve school model, the students range from 200 to 250 on average, on average based on our numbers. And so each each each student pay, in Nigeria, it's between 500 to 1,500. And so when you aggregate that, on average, a school pays around $48 to $1,200 monthly.

Nathan Latka

01:59That's 40 the k 12 school pays $48 a month for one student or 10 students? Sorry.

Chike Okoli

02:05>> No. No. No. No. The whole school. So we charge we charge I think that's about $1 per student. And so if you have 250 students, you're gonna be paying 250.

Number of Schools and Students

Nathan Latka

02:18I see. And how many how many schools pay for edumess today?

Chike Okoli

02:23>> Okay. So we launched August 2021. That's about sixteen months ago. So we have 60 schools right now.

Nathan Latka

02:31Congrats.

Chike Okoli

02:32>> Six zero? Yeah.

Nathan Latka

02:33Zero. Six zero.

Chike Okoli

02:34>> Yep. And and that's that's a total of around sixteen thousand students today.

Monthly Revenue and Churn Discussion

Nathan Latka

02:41Wow. So you're doing about $16,000 a month in revenue?

Chike Okoli

02:45>> Well, of course, you experience massive churn rates. And when you when you do the math, so our our monthly recurring revenue is between 2,000 to $10,000 right now.

Nathan Latka

02:59What do you mean between? I mean, it should be the exact number. How much revenue did you do last month?

Chike Okoli

03:05>> Well, so we aggregate our money timely. And so this year, I'd be able to say this is what by by the end of that time. So academic time is usually three in a year, three to four in a year, first, second time. And so the school gets to use months, January, February, March. And so within this period, we collect our revenue.

2022 ARR and 2023 Growth Goal

Nathan Latka

03:31Got it. But okay.

Chike Okoli

03:32>> So just So last year.

Nathan Latka

03:34The past thirty days, how much revenue have you done?

Chike Okoli

03:39>> That's around $2,000 but that's not a good the best way to evaluate our revenue model. Since so, we're in second term, academic term, schools resumed in December. So in March ending, they'll be going on. So they have that window to pay. But last year, we did nearly $25,000 ARR.

Nathan Latka

04:02How much?

Chike Okoli

04:03>> $25,000.

Nathan Latka

04:0525,000?

Chike Okoli

04:06>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

04:07That's great. Congratulations.

Chike Okoli

04:09>> Thank you very much. 25,000 last year.

Nathan Latka

04:11And what do you think you'll do this year?

Chike Okoli

04:14>> Well, we hope to we have an ambitious goal. We hope to 10 x, and so we are also raising to help us achieve that. And so we've got some implications. So we hope to 10 x. Our goal is to get us to a $100,000 ARR by the end of twenty twenty three.

Nathan Latka

04:33So you're hoping to 10 x. So you did $25,000 last year. You're hoping to get 250,000 this year. Right? That would be 10 x?

Chike Okoli

04:41>> Yeah. When you ramp that up, that would be that would be 10 x.

Nathan Latka

04:46Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this, you love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually, Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you connect

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07:10And you said you're raising right now. How much are you looking to raise?

Chike Okoli

07:14>> So we're raising one thirty five thousand dollars.

Nathan Latka

07:16135,000?

Chike Okoli

07:18>> Yes. In safe. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

07:20What's the cap on the safe?

Chike Okoli

07:25>> $2,000,000 valuation cap.

Nathan Latka

07:28Why are you worth why are you worth $2,000,000?

Chike Okoli

07:32>> So we we put a couple of things in place, and so we look at the market size, looked at

07:42>> the team that's playing, we look at also,

07:48>> we look at a couple of factors that we we used on, but I looked at the projection as well. And so within the next within the next five years, we are looking to do over 20,000,000 underlying revenue.

Nathan Latka

08:03Got it. Do you have a lead yet on on the note, the SAFE?

Chike Okoli

08:09>> Well, I wouldn't say we is a lead, but we have investor who is also on board of advisers who has indicated interest to invest $10,000. And so we also have our other board advisor who wants to put in 5 k. And so we are due diligence stage hoping to conclude that that phase.

Nathan Latka

08:33That's great. And you keep saying we. How many folks are on the team today full time?

Chike Okoli

08:37>> Okay. So I have two other cofounders, and I have three engineers. And so that three engineer, the CTO is one of them as well. And so then we have two sales persons who helps to do the sales and marketing.

Team Size and Roles

Nathan Latka

08:51So, Chike, just make it easy for me. Total employees of the company today is how many?

08:56>> 10.

08:5610. Okay. Great. And then there's three co founders.

Chike Okoli

08:59>> Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

09:01Okay. Got it. And and what is your role? Are you business development, marketing, and sales, or how do you split roles?

Chike Okoli

09:07>> I'm the CEO. I'm the CEO. And I also I also double up as the VP sales.

Nathan Latka

09:14So you're doing all the selling. So what's your plan? How do you go get 60 more schools?

Sales Strategy and WhatsApp Groups

Chike Okoli

09:20>> Well, we we've been trying a couple of sales channels, and then right now, we do online ads, but we recently discovered something that worked. We noticed that the school owners are aggregated on WhatsApp platforms, and so we began to run ads. We convinced them to begin to accept our ads directly on their platform. And so nationwide, we've been putting ads on their WhatsApp platform, putting our ads directly in their face, and and it's been giving us

09:47>> a massive ton of leads.

Nathan Latka

09:50Can you name some of the WhatsApp groups that are the big groups that k 12 schools hang out in?

Chike Okoli

09:55>> Okay. So there there is they have an association called NAPS, National Association of Private School Proprietors of Nigeria. And so they have another one called APSON. So our focus market APSON? APSON. APSON. Yeah.

10:09Can you spell it?

10:09>> The first one is a p s o n.

Nathan Latka

10:13AppSon. What's and it's a WhatsApp group in Nigeria that schools hang out in.

Chike Okoli

10:18>> Yeah. They created that group. So it's a it's like a body, a governing body. So there are two, one is NAPPS, National Association, NAPPS. And so they created a WhatsApp group, so we approached them. We said, okay, since you guys are here, I mean, in Nigeria alone, we have over in the FCT, we have over 2,000 of them, you know, in different WhatsApp subgroups. And so we we we're targeting them. In Nigeria alone, we have a

Target Market: Nigerian Private Schools

Chike Okoli

10:48>> total of seven seven thousand private schools, just excluding the government owned schools.

Nathan Latka

10:54Understood. That sounds like an exciting growth plan. So you're looking at raising, you've got 60 schools today. You mentioned churn is really high. If if the students are liking the platform, why are the why are the schools churning?

Churn Causes and Product Response

Chike Okoli

11:08>> Okay, so we discovered something that we are changing our model to help us. And so the students like it, the parents like it, but because we were depending on the school owners to pay us, right? So we, it's B2B then since the school owner has the appropriate students, and so the school owner collects, it includes a bid on the fee. So we discovered that depending on the passion, on the educator in question, even though this is

11:41>> solving a problem for them, sometimes they collect this money and, you know, there is that temptation to go back. And so we, what we've done is we've evolved our app in such a way that it gives the parents updates from time to time. So using what we call communication book, so the parents get because of that, we notice

12:07>> that has started declining, churn rates has started declining. And so that was the issue where the school owner has carried expenses and, oh, suddenly he realized that this hasn't been factored out and and suddenly, so we we we we we we are changing that.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Habits

Nathan Latka

12:26Understood. We're certainly rooting for you. We hope it goes well. In the meantime, though, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?

Chike Okoli

12:35>> Oh, my favorite book.

12:41>> Advanced Selling Strategies by Brian Tracy. So I think that book has had the most impact on my life.

Nathan Latka

12:47Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Chike Okoli

12:55>> In Nigeria? I wouldn't say that I have one right now. I'm just studying my competitors and and digging

Nathan Latka

13:05Number number three, what's your favorite online tool for building edumess?

Chike Okoli

13:11>> Well, HubSpot.

Nathan Latka

13:14Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Chike Okoli

13:18>> Five.

Nathan Latka

13:19And what's your what's your situation, Chike? Married, single, kids?

Chike Okoli

13:23>> Married, two kids.

Nathan Latka

13:25Two kids. And how old are you?

Chike Okoli

13:28>> I'm 38.

13:29>> 38.

Nathan Latka

13:30Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Chike Okoli

13:34>> I wish I knew how to build a fundable startup on time.

Nathan Latka

13:39Guys, there you have it. Edumess.com launched back in 2021. They're doing $2,500 per month in revenue right now by helping 60 schools educate their students on how to do software development. He's trained thousands of students and is now codifying that in his platform. Looking to raise 135,000 right now at a 2,000,000 cap. We'll see if that happens, 10 people on the team. Chike, thanks for taking us to the top.

Chike Okoli

14:02>> Thank you, Nathan. Pleasure to be here.

Nathan Latka

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