You’re reading a recent edition of The Playbook, a BenchK12 newsletter. Subscribe to receive updates and stay in touch with our team at benchk12.com/subscribe.

As anyone undertaking a new venture will tell you, planning is critical, but so is flexibility. We started off the year with our first-ever, all-team retreat in the beautiful Coachella Valley – now fondly known as “Benchella” – to set a course for the year ahead and get closer to making the ambitious goal of ending teacher shortages a reality. While there were pivots along the way, I am immensely grateful and proud of how we grew and navigated this year.

BenchK12 has been focused on building our team and our product, but that didn’t stop us from taking home some pitch competition wins, including the P2B Pitch Competition, (where *every* effing word in your vocabulary is welcomed) and being awarded the top women-founded company at the MN Cup. We also locked down some key partnerships in just the last few months which you can read more about below.

Despite the occasional curveballs and fbombs, we are closer than ever to realizing our goal of supporting educators and solving teacher shortages! On behalf of the entire BenchK12 team, we wanted to thank you for all of your support in 2022.

As we head into a momentous 2023, we will be communicating with you *a lot* more in the first quarter since we are officially going public with our equity crowdfunding campaign.

Momentum & Progress

•  Winner of the P2B Pitch Competition. We are honored and excited to share that BenchK12 won the sixth annual FBomb Breakfast Club pitch competition known fully as “Pitches2Bitches.” The FBomb Breakfast Club is a peer support community for women who are company founders and business owners where we “talk like truckers and build badass businesses.” Beyond getting amazing feedback from the Fbomb community and validation from an amazing group of women business leaders, this year is also the first year that the winner is being considered for angel investment from the FBomb Angels. Stay tuned for an exciting update next month.
•  Welcome to our BenchK12 Graduate Fellows. Please join me in welcoming our first cohort of BenchK12 graduate fellows. We designed the fellowship with a few things in mind; (1) how can we provide access to graduate students who are interested in entrepreneurship and tech startups; (2) how can we potentially provide an opportunity for those with an education background to make a jump into technology while bringing along their experience in schools? I am hopeful that with our first two fellows we are able to do both! Please meet:
• AAEE: We have finalized our partnership with the American Association for Employment in Education and are the exclusive sponsor of their Pipeline Mini-Grant Program that was just launched. Thanks to our Director, Engagement, Yanique Taylor for all of her support in nurturing this relationship and joining me in Baltimore for the AAEE Conference where we presented a session on the pipeline clog related to credentialing. (More on that soon!)
• Checkr: We finalized our partnership agreement last month and are now starting to build our integrations with their platform to provide in-app background checks, degree verifications, work experience, references, and other relevant professional credentials. Thank you to our VP, Tech, Daniel Glucksman for making this connection possible and to Daniel Barsky, our persuasive and thoughtful legal counsel, for all of their work to get this partnership finalized!

Expertise & Asks

•  Commit to investing $100. in BenchK12’s Community Round. We are taking commitments from our network of supporters now, with early incentives just for you. There’s a lot more coming your way in January about why this is the right investment and solution for our nation’s teacher shortage and we want you in on the ground floor.
•  Spread the Word. If you can’t invest right now, help get the word out about BenchK12. You can start by forwarding this message to anyone in your network who might be eager to help solve the teacher shortage in K12 education. Sharing this with just three folks and your endorsement would be a tremendous start!
•  Pilot Partners. Join our waitlist and bring BenchK12 to your state. We have some special incentives to share with the first five states that we work with.
•  Get Social with Us Virtually: Twitter // Instagram // TikTok

Perspectives

• Yes Virginia, substitute pay rates matter. Pre-pandemic data and research from Brown University suggests that a 50% increase of the daily rate in incentive pay may be enough to close fill-rate gaps.
• Check out the eLearn Podcast where our founder, Brooke Barrett and BenchK12 supporter and substitute teacher, Makaela Kingsley, discuss what it is to be a substitute teacher today, why vacancies are persisting and growing, and how BenchK12 can help turn the tide.
• ‘Tis the Season A Louisville Primary Care physician is taking Fridays off to serve as a substitute teacher and donating his pay back to the school. BenchK12 can’t wait to create more stories like this in 2023.
•  Substitute teachers are just looking for a little respect. Even Ms. Manners is weighing in now on how substitute teachers need a little support and respect.
• Schools are going into “goblin mode” due to the teacher shortage. [Cue laughing and sobbing.]

Gratitude

• Now is a great time of year to say thank you in a meaningful way to educators. Please consider sponsoring a classroom project on Donors Choose as part of your year end giving plans or making a donation to our partners at Substantial Classrooms.
• We are grateful to announce that we met our first raise goal through WeFunder this month while in the ‘testing the waters’ phase of our raise. Please help us exceed it before we go public in January to help keep the momentum going! You can invest as little as $100. (and get future bragging rights!).

About BenchK12 and The Playbook

BenchK12 is the future of work for K12 educators, starting with substitute teachers. We remove the friction from the educator credentialing process to solve the teacher shortage and we support teachers once they are in the classroom with modern technology to help them advance their careers and ensure student success.

You’re receiving The Playbook because at some point you made an impression on one of the members of our founding team or our advisors.

You are a great partner, colleague, friend, co-conspirator, inspiration, champion, or future collaborator and in order to build the best company—that truly empowers and serves the K12 educators and leaders who help our students realize their genius—we need a deep bench, with you on our team. Wanna be an official Day One supporter? Consider making a commitment to invest: www.wefunder.com/benchk12 and you can own your piece of solving the teacher shortage!

You’re reading a recent edition of The Playbook, a BenchK12 newsletter. Subscribe to receive updates and stay in touch with our team at benchk12.com/subscribe.

We’ve missed you! As you’ll see in our current update, we’ve been busy. The demand for BenchK12 is growing and while we’re not happy that teacher shortages and burnout are the most dire that we’ve ever seen, we are hopeful that we can help and that our solution is resonating with K12 education leaders and partners.

Please take five minutes to read through our updates below. We have a lot of new team members who are the best at what they do and they are putting those skills and expertise to work on our solution. We also pulled a few highlights from recent press on how the teacher shortage is playing out in a few states where BenchK12 could help. As always, we need your support to keep helping us build broad awareness about the friction in teacher credentialing and the increasingly serious shortage. If you have school-aged children or friends and family with school-aged children, please help us reach them with BenchK12’s message. Together, this is one crisis we can solve!

Momentum & Progress

•  Top Women-Founded Company in Minnesota. BenchK12 was awarded a $25k grant from the Carlson Family Foundation for being named the top women-founded company at this year’s Minnesota Cup. Given that 40% of the companies who participated this year were women-founded, this was truly an honor for our team.
• MN Cup Finalist. We were also named as a finalist in the Education and Training Division of the MN Cup after competing through various rounds with nearly 3000 Minnesota-based startups.
• SIX (!!) States. Our solution is resonating with state and local education leadership. We have six states on our waiting list for pilots for this school year.
•  Growing our team. We’re so grateful to share that we’ve been busy growing our team of talented leaders who all want to be a part of solving the teacher shortage with BenchK12:
  • VP, Technology: Daniel Glucksman has an amazing track record of success growing his previous company (Grocer Key) and product team from idea to exit. He also serves as the Technical Director for Gener8tor’s Venture Studio helping them build technical teams for their emerging startups.
  • Director, Engagement: Yanique Taylor has worked across grassroots, community-based organizations, government agencies, and nonprofits in Newark, NJ, and her home country of Jamaica to engage with diverse audiences to ensure the successful development and implementation of a number of high-impact initiatives.
  • Director, Product: Meg Rockman has an impressive background in marketing, project management, and as an entrepreneur, with previous leadership roles at Pearson, among others.
  • Director, Design: Larissa McCartney’s artistic genius has helped the folks at the Gates Foundation, Carter Center, CA and WA state agencies, PayPal, Microsoft, HBO and more, tell their stories with compelling visuals.
  • Legal Counsel: Daniel Barsky, Partner, Holland and Knight, is an IP and patent attorney specializing in licensing and transactional matters, including mergers and acquisitions (M&A), joint ventures, and multinational licensing agreements, as well as information technology, data privacy, cyber fraud, and data breach matters.
  • Accounting & Finance: Fine Point Consulting supports startups and nonprofits in the Upper Midwest by providing leadership and strategic direction, as well as ongoing transactional support to help them get more done, scale fast, and stay lean.

Expertise & Asks

•  Commit to investing in BenchK12’s Community Round. We are taking commitments from our network of supporters now, with early incentives just for you. There’s a lot more coming your way soon about why this is the right investment and solution for our nation’s teacher shortage and we want you in on the ground floor.
•  Spread the Word. If you can’t invest right now, help get the word out about BenchK12. You can start by forwarding this message to anyone in your network who might be eager to help solve the teacher shortage in K12 education. Sharing this with just three folks and your endorsement would be a tremendous start!
•  Pilot Partners. Join our waitlist and bring BenchK12 to your state. We have some special incentives to share with the first five states that we work with.
•  Get Social with Us Virtually: Twitter // Instagram // TikTok

Perspectives

• Did you know that there’s currently no data infrastructure for educator workforce data? (This is the best we’ve got right now.) BenchK12 is here to solve for this, too.
• Check out this Launch MN panel on Blockchain where our President and Founding Partner, Brooke Barrett, talked about verifiable credentials and use cases for blockchain technology beyond finance.
• What the heck is a verifiable credential or a non-fungible token (NFT), why should I care, and how are they different? Our friends over at Trinsic are here to break it down for you.
• Louisiana has a backlog of at least 7,400 teachers who are trying to get credentialed. BenchK12 could help them with the modern technology to clear it in a few days rather than months.
• In Oregon, it takes an average of 61 days for a teacher’s credentialing application to be approved. Guess who could help with that?

Gratitude

•  Please join us in celebrating Jennifer MacDonald and her 1-year anniversary at BenchK12! Jen has had a tremendous impact since she joined the team and we’re thrilled to announce her promotion to VP, Brand. You’re getting a sneak peak at our brand refresh that Jen’s been leading with our updated logo in the header. Stay tuned for our site refresh coming soon…
•  We’re grateful for our new partnership with the American Association for Employment in Education (AAEE). We are attending and presenting at AAEE’s annual conference in Baltimore and making a big announcement with them soon…
•  Thank *you*. Your reading these updates and sending us notes of encouragement, advice, connections, and opportunities makes our work possible. We know we can solve the teacher shortage with our community of supporters.

About BenchK12 and The Playbook

BenchK12 is the future of work for K12 educators, starting with substitute teachers. We remove the friction from the educator credentialing process to solve the teacher shortage and we support teachers once they are in the classroom with modern technology to help them advance their careers and ensure student success.

You’re receiving The Playbook because at some point you made an impression on one of the members of our founding team or our advisors.

You are a great partner, colleague, friend, co-conspirator, inspiration, champion, or future collaborator and in order to build the best company—that truly empowers and serves the K12 educators and leaders who help our students realize their genius—we need a deep bench, with you on our team. Wanna be an official Day One supporter? Consider making a commitment to invest: www.wefunder.com/benchk12 and you can own your piece of solving the teacher shortage!

We promise to keep these quarterly communications brief, but rich. You’ll hear from not only us but our partners; firsthand insights into what we’re working on; milestones we’re reaching; asks for expertise; and shout outs of gratitude.

You’re reading a recent edition of The Playbook, a BenchK12 newsletter. Subscribe to receive updates and stay in touch with our team at benchk12.com/subscribe.

We’re excited to share with you what we’ve been up to and what’s ahead in 2022.

The challenges of COVID-19 continue to be felt worldwide. It’s no secret that K12 education has been hit especially hard. Over the past two years, educators and families have gone to great lengths to ensure learning continues and students feel supported. Administrators are balancing constantly changing public health recommendations (or a complete lack thereof) with the desire to provide in-person instruction and attention. The strain of the pandemic on an already strained K12 workforce has resulted in a nationwide teacher shortage that has reached a crisis level.

In this time of great challenge and change, we believe that there has never been a stronger case for BenchK12. As a team comprised of educators, administrators, and parents, we personally understand and have experienced the K12 hiring process and challenges. We deeply feel (and are motivated by) the urgency of this problem. It’s time to modernize K12 credentialing using the best technology has to offer. That is BenchK12’s mission and we’re so grateful to have you on this journey with us.

-Brooke Barrett, Founder and President

Momentum & Progress

• 🏆 Winning. BenchK12 was awarded a competitive Innovation Grant from Launch Minnesota, with just 12 other MN-based companies. You can read the full details here.
• 💪 Getting Stronger. We’ve added new members to the BenchK12 team!

Sandy Maynard joins us as Vice President of Experience. She will be leading our pilots starting this summer working directly with our school partners. She’s an experienced and empathetic former Chief Technology Officer who has experienced “all the frustrations and joys of edtech!”

Jen MacDonald is our Director of Voice & Brand. Jen has spent nearly a decade helping education and technology leaders tell their stories using as little jargon as possible.

Elizabeth Gossens Eide rounds out our communications efforts as Vice President of Strategic Marketing. Liz thinks it’s about time we apply the best of technology to some of education’s most outdated systems!

Expertise & Asks

• 🚀 Invest in BenchK12’s Community Round. Venture capital invested only 2% of its funding into female-founded companies last year, despite female-founded companies outperforming markets in 2021. So we’re looking to our community, who understands this problem and knows and believes in us, to create momentum and invest in us through our community funding round. We’re using Wefunder to professionally manage the round and make our case to you and other potential investors in BenchK12. We have some exciting incentives and low-dollar entry points, as well as lots of resources on how to make smart “angel” investments. More to come!
• 📣 Spread the Word. If you can’t invest right now, please help get the word out about BenchK12. You can start by forwarding this message to anyone in your network who might be eager to help solve the hiring crisis in K12 education. Sharing this with just three folks and your endorsement would be a tremendous start!
• ✈️ Pilot partners. We’re finalizing our pilot partners for Summer 2022 now (SEAs, Regional Collaboratives, and LEAs are welcome!). We have two pathways they can choose from equity (paid model) and non-equity (free model). Interested in learning more? Let’s talk!
• 💬 Get Social with Us (virtually) Twitter | Instagram | Medium

Perspectives

• 💡 Our founder, Brooke, went to her first ASU+GSV Summit. She shares her tips for getting back into your conference groove and her takeaways from this year’s 13th(!!) summit.
• 👂 The Substitute Teacher Crisis is getting worse. Listen to this NPR news story on how a school service center in Illinois is confronting the challenge. [Surprise: Teacher credentialing is the long-term solution.]
• 📊 Employee Retention is a Top Priority for District Leaders. A new report from EducationElements and XanEdu finds employee retention beating out learning loss, mask mandates, and COVID-19.
• 💪 Substitutes in Camouflage? In New Mexico, members of the state’s National Guard have been called into the classroom to fill shortages. The result has been transformative for both students and their new teachers.
• 💰 It’s More Than the Money. Substitute teachers in DC recently got a small raise, but the district is realizing that’s not enough to recruit and retain top talent.

Gratitude

• 🧠 Get to know our brain trust. Our Advisory Board represents decades of experience in education and technology. The entire BenchK12 team gathered recently at our first all-team retreat, “Benchella”. We’ll be featuring some articles and videos featuring our advisory board members so you can learn more about each of them, why they are excited about BenchK12, and how they have been vital to our success.
• 🙏 Thank You, Shawn. We remain grateful for the contributions of our now former founding team member, Shawn, and wish her well in her future endeavors.

About BenchK12

BenchK12 is building the future of work for educators, starting with substitute teachers. Why substitute teachers? We know that there is an immediate shortage and need for great substitute teachers and technology that helps schools and subs manage their entire career lifecycle. What’s out there today isn’t solving this problem.

So what does this actually look like in practice?

For our school partners, it means not just finding someone to fill a vacancy, but the *right* sub for your school, your classroom, and your students for 50% less than it costs today with a more streamlined vetting and onboarding process, AND smart analytics about how your subs are doing. For subs, it means one place to get quickly licensed/certified to substitute teach, a more personalized sub experience where you get to show who you are, what you are great at teaching, find all of the details for your sub role before you arrive in the classroom, and the opportunity for higher pay, advancement, and recognition for the important role you play in K12 education.

You can find a lot more information on our website or by watching this quick promo video.

You’re receiving The Playbook because at some point you made an impression on one or all of our team members. You are a great partner, colleague, friend, co-conspirator, inspiration, champion, or future collaborator and in order to build the best company — that truly empowers and serves the K12 educators and leaders who help our students realize their genius — we need a deep bench, with you on our team. We promise to keep these communications brief, but rich. You’ll hear from not only us but from our partners; firsthand insights into what we’re working on; milestones we’re reaching; asks for expertise; and shoutouts of gratitude.

You’re reading a recent edition of The Playbook, a BenchK12 newsletter. Subscribe to receive updates and stay in touch with our team at benchk12.com/subscribe.

You’re receiving v1 of The Playbook because at some point you made an impression on our co-founders, Brooke Barrett and Shawn Tamaribuchi.

You are a great partner, colleague, friend, co-conspirator, inspiration, champion, or future collaborator and in order to build the best company — that truly empowers and serves the K12 educators and leaders who help our students realize their genius — and we need you on our team.

We promise to keep these quarterly communications brief, but rich. You’ll hear from not only us but our partners including firsthand insights into what we’re working on; milestones we’re reaching; asks for expertise and advice; and shoutouts of gratitude. If for any reason you aren’t interested in hearing from us, please accept our apologies, and feel free to unsubscribe.

About BenchK12

BenchK12 is an empowering human capital platform designed specifically for K12 education, starting with substitute teachers. Why substitute teachers? We know that there is an immediate shortage and need for great substitute teachers and technology that helps schools and subs manage their entire career lifecycle. What’s out there today isn’t solving this problem.

So what does this actually look like in practice?

For our school partners, it means not just finding someone to fill a vacancy, but the *right* sub for your school, your classroom, and your students for 50% less than it costs today with a more streamlined vetting and onboarding process, AND smart analytics about how your subs are doing. For subs, it means one place to get licensed/certified to substitute teach, a more personalized sub experience where you get to show who you are, what you are great at teaching, find all of the details for your sub role before you arrive in the classroom, and the opportunity for higher pay, advancement, and recognition for the important role you play in K12 education.

You can find a lot more information at our website or by watching this quick promo video.

Momentum & Progress

• 🏆 We finished in the top 10% of companies at YC’s Startup School!
• 🎓 We are an HMC Inq. company! In October, we graduated from our very first incubator, started pitching to investment partners, and built our MVP.
• 🐣 Yup. We have an MVP! Inspired by our mentors and peers at HMC Inq and YCs StartUp School, we built something. It’s our rough start to help you get an idea of the vision we are working towards. Ask us for an invite or demo on Android or iOS.

Expertise & Asks

• ✈️ Pilot partners. We’re seeking up to five pilot partners (SEAs, Regional Collaboratives, and LEAs are welcome!). We have two pathways they can choose from: equity (paid model) and non-equity (free model). Interested in learning more? Let’s talk!
• 🤝🏼 Investment partners. We have a number of wonderful partners who are interested investors who aren’t usually first money in. So if you are an angel investor or pre-seed investor, want to become one, know one, and are interested in enterprise SaaS, Future of Work, Edtech, Women-Founders, or Blockchain Beyond Crypto, let’s talk!
• 📢 Feedback. Whatever you have to give, we’ll take it. Brooke is a former educator and has been working in the classroom & c-suite with a variety of SEA & LEA school partners for her entire career, but we know that things are constantly changing for our school partners. What are we missing? How can we better serve you? Let us know.
• 👋 Get Social with Us (virtually, for now) Twitter // Instagram // TikTok

Perspectives

• ⚠️ COVID-19, quarantines, and an increase in sub shortages are forcing creativity and pushing schools to the brink (Pew Charitable Trusts)
• ⛓️ Blockchain is coming to U.S. K12 education, so what the heck is it, what does that mean for you, and what are some examples/pilots happening now? (…We’re really excited about the Broward County Equity Co-Lab)
• 🤷‍♀️ While we love our brothers, women-founded companies performed 63% better than those without a female founder, but still only received 2.2% of venture capital in 2020. So what gives? (Medium, Karen Cahn)
• 💡From Brooke: Forward in 2021: The promises of K12 education, tech, and America
• 🧭 From Shawn: Fearlessly Innovative: Navigating EdTech and Venture Capital

Gratitude

• 🙏🏻 More thanks than there are words to our amazing advisors who said “yes” to jumping on this ride with us in the middle of a pandemic. We’ll be sure to share more about them in future comms.
• 💌 All the founder love to Amanda DoAmaral (@AmandaDoAmanda), CEO @thinkfiveable. This first edition of The Playbook was inspired by her advice (& awesome updates) to reach out to everyone we know about what we’re doing at BenchK12. If you’re not yet familiar with Fiveable, check it out.
• 🦸🏻 A special word of thanks to my co-founder, Shawn Tamaribuchi. As any founders will tell you, this is a manic journey and I couldn’t be more grateful that Shawn said “yes” to doing this together.