Founder’s Five: Alan Forbes, F.I.R.S.T. Institute
October 18, 2024 Founder's FiveFounder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on…
Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions.
Alok Jain co-founded Moonpreneur to bridge a gap in the traditional education system around innovation and entrepreneurship.
Moonpreneur was co-founded in 2020 by Alok Jain to bridge a gap in the traditional education system around innovation and entrepreneurship. Its curriculum focuses on tech, STEM, and critical soft skills to kindle an entrepreneurial mindset and help children aged 7-16 prepare for college and the future of work.
What is your company’s origin story?
This started in my backyard. My daughter was around 14, and my son was nine. And she wanted my son to drink from copper bottles instead of plastic. He liked the idea but felt the copper bottle was bulky and ugly. “My friends are going to laugh at me,” he complained. And my daughter thought, “Why don’t I just transform this into a smaller size?” She came to me with that idea, and I said, “Sure, why not give it a shot?” And when we started building, we realized that what I thought would be 30 or 40 hours of work became several 100 hours. Because bringing anything from scratch to market is difficult as there is no set process. But I was determined, and so was my daughter, so we kept doing it. We launched it on Kickstarter; we got some early support of over $800. Then we launched on Amazon, and she sold over 300 bottles.
In this process, we learned that many of my friends were trying to teach something similar to their kids: the entire product-building experience where they can learn something, build something, and go to market. But most of them gave up because nobody has hundreds of hours to put into something like this. It sends a very negative message to the children to give up the thing because it is hard. And this is what we wanted to fix. So that was the foundation of Moonpreuner. Our curriculum helps students learn something, build something, and go to market. They have an entire end-to-end product-building experience. And so far, the market is responding extremely well.
How will the market be changed by your company’s success?
Looking at the U.S. rankings in STEM, especially in science or mathematics, the U.S. does not belong to the top 10 or even the top 15 in the developed world. But then the pandemic happened, followed by the AI revolution. The message is very clear to parents: the future of work will look very different for their children. Low-level programming, editorial, writing, and creative graphics will all disappear. Machines are going to take over. How will our kids survive and thrive in the future of work 10,15, or 20 years from now? Learning the whole product-building experience and connecting all the dots becomes very important.
That’s what we are trying to bring. The schools are not teaching it effectively. By introducing this to students, we aim to foster an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset that can connect the dots—a skill, which will be very hard for machines to replicate. We believe that 10 or 15 years down the line, this will become a critical skill.
We aim to foster an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset that can connect the dots—a skill, which will be very hard for machines to replicate. We believe that 10 or 15 years down the line, this will become a critical skill.
Alok Jain
We are addressing the learning gap where parents and educators struggle to teach the next generation skills that will keep them relevant. And I think this is going to change the market. Absolutely.
I’ll give you an example. At a conference, I met a gentleman with a booth representing a new venture, and he said the company was due to his child, who first began with Moonpreneur three years ago. Within six months, his child learned that he was not built to code or to work with technology. However, our program helped him discover his entrepreneurial skills. After going through our business program, he got an idea about recruiting the right employee through AI, and his dad took over his idea. I realized after that that I need to be extremely thoughtful. The impact of what we do is huge. And we are nobody right now. But given the area we are in and where this can lead, we can literally transform the world.
What do you know now that you wish you had known when you began?
Start with the business model: Is this a one-time sale or a subscription? This will affect the company’s valuation. If it is a lifestyle business, you might have a smaller multiplier. No matter how hard you want to try to expand, you will hit saturation much faster. Next is the market size and whether you’re operating in a smaller or larger market. Both have advantages and disadvantages. But if you are operating in a larger market and you find a niche and then expand, the sky’s the limit.
The kind of market also matters. Whether you pursue B2C versus B2B depends on the industry. If you are in enterprise software, B2B might be a better start. However, if you are in education since it is one of the oldest industries, it might be hard to penetrate with a B2B route. Initially, maybe start with B2C, make your mark, and then go on to B2B if it works. Those are some of our hard learnings.
If you are trying to build a large company, you need to have an offering where you build a platform that does specific things. And you let the customer know that these are the things your platform does. On the other hand, if you get some very large marquee account and they start dictating your terms, you might never be able to build something massive because now you are just trying to please them, and it never becomes scalable.
How you build the initial team is also very important. I learned this the hard way. With only a handful of people, you need veterans who know how to operate in a startup and push forward despite roadblocks. Because there will be negative fires every other day, and knowing how to handle them is critical. I also learned that there are two kinds of people. Hundreds of things may go wrong, but only a few work. Some may dwell on negatives and feel sad, but others take inspiration from the few successes to move ahead. In a startup, hundreds of things can go wrong, and only two or three things will go right. Successful team members will celebrate those two things and stay motivated. You need that kind of mindset in the early days.
I would have been in a different place sooner if I had known these things before. But it’s a part of learning. You can’t worry about regret; it’s just part of the journey.
What non-intuitive insight have you gained through this work?
Just learning about the consumer education market certainly makes you humble. Because out of many things, only a few work. You might have intuition, but it might be different when you go into a mass market. Initially, we were trying to push entrepreneurship as a key offering. However, we found the market was much smaller, even though we thought this was the right thing to teach. Sometimes, parents might want to avoid discussing business or money with their kids. Entrepreneurship is still essential, but today, we lead with innovation. We say we will teach your child robotics or game development, but there are three pillars: we teach them to ideate, build a product or prototype, and go-to-market strategy. With this approach, we bring the parents to a place where they understand what we are teaching and why. After six months, these parents have transformed their understanding of what is essential, whereas they may not have been open to it on Day One.
We’ve also learned the B2C client acquisition funnel; this is my first B2C company. In the B2B world, you define the whole funnel. We bring customers to our free workshop; after that, we might offer them a free month and then evaluate how many convert to paying customers. However, the B2C funnel is more complex and less intuitive. A local ad may seem to narrow your funnel, but after several months, once you can connect the dots, you might find it far more effective than an ad with broader coverage. Just understanding how to go to market and what your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) looks like can be a million-dollar exercise for any B2C company (especially in tech), because the funnel can be complicated. Likewise, the LTV (Lifetime Value) of a parent and child can change with very minor things you inject.
And then sometimes you might feel that you are in a noisy market, with many entrants and players. And once you dive in, you may realize that all these companies produce a lot of garbage. And while there might be noise, you might actually be operating in a white space. We currently have one of the highest conversion rates in our age group of 7-16 market. You might not realize this on day one. You need to peel the layers of onion one at a time. And once you are down four or five, six layers, then you say, oh my god, the opportunity is huge—there is nobody near us. This is a complicated market. I welcome anybody to take $10 million and replicate our work. I mean, salute to you, but it’s just so many moving parts, and you must collect them well.
What other education company besides your own do you wish you had started?
Khan Academy has done amazing work and had a real impact here and abroad. They pioneered high-quality, interactive content in multiple languages and have won many awards. Today, there are more than 10,000 videos. Their AI assistant, Kahnmigo, is impressive and transformative. I’m also very impressed with Physics Wallah, which has done tremendous work. I think they have over 45 million users. We are talking very massive numbers. I have a lot of respect for both.