Nwanyinma Dike
Welcome to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. I am Nwanyinma Dike, the Managing Director of Startup Runway, the leading platform linking underrepresented founders to capital and investors. I’m super excited about this episode of the Atlanta Startup Podcast. I’m here to welcome Janessa Ferrel, Founder of QuestRead. QuestRead is dedicated to improving literacy through interactive reading experiences tailored to children’s interests and learning levels. What’s awesome about Janessa is that she snagged the Woman’s Empowerment Award at the 25th edition of this Startup Runway pitch showcase recently. We are really glad and excited to welcome Janessa. Thank you for joining the podcast today.
Janessa Ferrel
Thank you for having me. It’s great to see you again.
Nwanyinma Dike
Awesome. So, let’s jump right into it. Please share about QuestRead and ultimately, what brought you to solving this particular problem?
Janessa Ferrel
QuestRead is primarily a reading game for children aged 5 to 11 who have to practice reading. They may love practicing reading already, or maybe they dislike practicing and are falling behind. Either way, in order to continue to grow and become a confident successful reader, they need to be practicing regularly. So we make it a fun experience for them where they immerse themselves in a game as they read books out loud, they listen to books, and then their reading activity actually progresses the game. So they’re competing against other players and they earn prizes in the app and in real life. We send prizes in the mail to kids and everything we do is designed to encourage them to spend more time reading.
Nwanyinma Dike
What brought you to solving this particular problem?
Janessa Ferrel
Well, I spent the past 20 years working with children who were struggling with reading. As a reading specialist and an elementary teacher, I’m a mom of three. and a foster parent, I worked a lot with kids who had these issues. I learned a lot about the research behind reading what actually worked in moving the needle in reading with kids, and what kids actually needed. I looked around for tools to use with these kids and there was nothing available that my students liked to work with so I decided that I would build something that they would love, and that would actually work for them. I went to work in tech for a few years first to learn myself, and to develop my skills for a few years as a product manager and another ed-tech company. And then last year, we started QuestRead with myself and two other developers.
Nwanyinma Dike
I love that. Also, I am a mom. I’ve had two bonus kids, they’re now 13 and 11, going on 47. But I do remember the difference between learning tools and thought about how to make it fun and engaging I want to resonate with what you’re building with QuestRead. I just imagine that it’s making a lot of lives, for parents’ and teachers’ perspectives easier, and also just making learning engaging for the students and the children. I am excited about this particular product. In terms of your experience now as a founder, how have you found that to be relative to working particularly with students or as an educator, and as an employee at another tech startup being a founder?
Janessa Ferrel
When you switched from the classroom to work in tech, there was a huge shift there. My husband’s a developer, so I’d always message him and be like, “What are these weird acronyms they’re using?” I don’t understand, right? I was taking night school to learn product management skills and there’s a lot of learning there, but when you’re learning and you’re put in a situation, it helps you empathize with the people that you’re working with. I think one of the things that I feel very strongly about as a founder is that I interview very close to my end user and that I have the ability to do that all the time. I’m still tutoring kids on the side. I’m still working with them one-on-one. I have three kids of my own, one of them is going into second grade. I’m around them all the time. I can’t get too disconnected from it and that’s something that I want to continue to do throughout my journey here.
Nwanyinma Dike
And to just be frank on my side, that’s my favorite type of founder. A founder who was really passionate about being as close to the end user and the person they’re trying to serve through their product and through their startup as possible. That is awesome and it reflects in what you’re building and what you’ve built so far. What have you found to be the most challenging about your journey building QuestRead so far?
Janessa Ferrel
I think the most challenging thing right now is the scarcity of capacity, I guess. There’s only one of me and we have a small team and so you have to wear many hats. You’re constantly prioritizing. Are you focusing right now on sales, product, or fundraising? You can’t do everything all at the same time. So constantly trying to juggle the priorities and stretch resources. So that’s probably the biggest challenge right now.
Nwanyinma Dike
And that’s kind of the name of the game. I want to switch gears slightly. One, I mentioned that you were one of our winners at the Startup Runway showcase. That was our 25th, it was kind of a big deal of a showcase for Startup Runway,. You were one of our winners, particularly for women’s empowerment. I wanted to first ask, how was your experience that day and how did you prepare?
Janessa Ferrel
I found the whole experience so encouraging and just inspiring. I loved the way that we met with mentors before the pitches, we sat at tables, and they came out and we could set the agenda to talk with them. And then meeting with the other founders and hearing what they’re building was really inspiring and motivating too, and then especially hearing the founders who came back and spoke who had won previous rounds, I thought that was a great experience. To prepare for it, I just practiced. I mean, I spent most of my life speaking in front of second graders, I guess, and different groups of folks. I have no trouble speaking in front of people, but trying to remember my lines and memorize it and just getting feedback from different folks, was what I did to prepare.
Nwanyinma Dike
Well, practice makes perfect and it worked out. It worked out. Along similar lines, not just for preparation for a pitch, but in general, you’re getting momentum with QuestRead. And so for someone who’s building something right now who may be listening, and maybe a couple of steps behind you in their journey as a founder, what advice might you give them or whoever that listener might be?
Janessa Ferrel
I would say find a problem that you care deeply about because it’s going to be a long road. There’s gonna be a lot of hurdles along the way, a lot of ups and downs and if you don’t really care about that problem, it’s gonna be really hard to stay motivated through it. And then also try to validate your solution as quickly as possible. So in the early days of QuestRead, I created kind of a really simple MVP of this where kids could record their voice and I’d get the reward along the way, and kind of this duct tape version, right? And that helped validate some of my early assumptions. So trying to test these things along the way. The other thing, too, right now, I am both a teacher and a mother. I’m kind of both of my customers, as well. I have to put my own bias to the side in the way that I think about this because what I’ve learned through customer discovery, is that I am not my ideal user, in a lot of ways, and that influences the way I do the product. I need to set that aside and listen very carefully to what people are telling me, rather than to what I want them to say or what I think they want. So for me, documenting interviews and conversations has been really helpful, so I can look back in a more unbiased way.
Nwanyinma Dike
Well, customer discovery is incredibly powerful and it’s very interesting how many people run really fast to start something without doing some customer discovery and having the right conversations with their end users and their actual customer. I’m really glad that you highlight that, especially for those who are really starting in that journey, like interview folks, and not just your friends, but the folks who are not within your circle and who you hope would open up their wallet and pay for whatever you’re building. I’m glad that you mentioned that. I wanted to give you a chance to share about what’s next for QuestRead and what’s on kind of the very close horizon in terms of goals or things that you’re trying to do or launch in the next few months or so.
Janessa Ferrel
Right now, we’re focused a lot on building out the gameplay of the app, because we’ve seen a lot of positive results there. Parents and children both love the game elements we have so far and we’re leaning into that. To continue to expand, we’re having patch achievements getting released really soon. We’re adding all sorts of new fun game elements, I won’t even say too much about what that might be, we’ll leave it as a bit of a surprise. We’re also doing some great partnerships with some nonprofits in the Atlanta area. This fall, looking at school pilots to be getting into the school districts as well to learn how it works in that environment and get some feedback.
Nwanyinma Dike
That’s awesome. That’s exciting. So a bunch of new kids that have kids that are going to be integrating with your app in the next few months and giving you some keen feedback. That’s exciting for QuestRead. Congrats on that progress so far. I would like to give you a chance to share a bit about any last thoughts that you might have for founders, for listeners, and listeners could also be investors and those who are excited about our ecosystem here in the south, any lingering thoughts or things you want to make sure you share?
Janessa Ferrel
I guess one of the things that I’ve been learning, it’s more of a personal growth story, is to not limit yourself by the box that you put yourself in. So sometimes we have ideas about who we are, what we’re capable of, and what our path is. And for me, I always thought I was going to be an elementary teacher. I loved that. It was fulfilling. I didn’t think that I could do something more than that, or that I should do something more than that. But now that I’m doing it, I can see when a small success leads to a big success. And so you learn and you gain confidence in yourself as you go. I would just challenge folks if they have a dream or a goal that they’re passionate about and that they want to do, but feel like maybe they’re not the right person to do it, just to take baby steps in that direction. And if you take a small goal for yourself, you win that, then you can set a next one and just kind of keep moving on and keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, then you kind of go beyond that box, and you’ll be able to stretch yourself and be proud of the things that you’ve done.
Nwanyinma Dike
I love that message that’s keen to hear, especially for those who what I call this version of entrepreneurship, like a certain type of crazy because you have to convince a whole host of different people about an idea that does not exist, and you have to speak about it as if it does. And so particularly women, sometimes people of color, who might not see themselves in the space very often reflected, it might be easier for folks to count themselves out as worthy and capable to play and deliver something and solve some really big problems in the way that you’re doing with QuestRead. I appreciate you sharing that as kind of your parting thoughts. I appreciate that. So with that, I would love for folks to have a sense of how they can stay connected to you, what’s going on with QuestRead, and how can folks follow up with you or follow you on socials or via email or whatever mode of communication.
Janessa Ferrel
Our website is https://www.questread.com/. On social media, we’re at @QuestRead. So easy to remember, if you do have elementary kids, you can download the app from the App Store. It’s called QuestRead. So you can find us in all those places and we’d love for you to follow along and give us your feedback and ideas.
Nwanyinma Dike
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Janessa, and thank you for listening to this episode of the Atlanta Startup Podcast.
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