Mentoring Minds Case Study

Problem or overview

Mentoring Minds provided ELA, Math, and Science curricula for K-8 students and had achieved initial success with its ThinkUp! product line, but growth had stagnated. The ThinkUp product line contained digital and print components and delivered critical instruction and teaching tools that made for more effective teaching and learning.

The leadership team wanted to continue growing the company but lacked a clear direction as to how. The prevailing belief within the leadership team was that Mentoring Minds needed to “go national” to expand its growth. The company lacked Product Management and brought Dan on board to provide strategic direction for its products in order to drive company growth.

What was the outcome of the solution

The development team released new versions of the product as they were ready. Within 6 months, the NPS had increased 36 points. In addition, because the product strategy and vision were clearly articulated, team members spent less time in meetings. The time that was spent in meetings was more productive, and Dan achieved an overall 72% increase in efficiency.

The improvements led to the best revenue in a quarter in the history of the company and were followed by an 8 figure acquisition of Mentoring Minds.

• 36 point NPS (Net Promoter Score) increase in 6 months

• 72% increase in efficiency for engineering team

• Strongest quarter in the company's history

• 8 figure sale and acquisition of Mentoring Minds

What was the solution?

Dan spoke with the leadership team and hypothesized the company was spreading its resources too thin and was stuck in the "Dilution Dilemma", meaning that its resources were dispersed too broadly and across too many initiatives to achieve true product success. He needed to identify where to focus the company's resources to maximize its opportunities for success.

Dan immediately got to work applying his EdTech product roadmap process to Mentoring Minds' needs.

Step 1: Determine product purpose and customer clarity

Step one was determining the purpose of Mentoring Minds' products by conducting multiple exercises with the leadership team to identify Mentoring Minds' best customers and users. After examining the user activity, sales, and market numbers in Texas, Dan identified the Texas market had a loyal fanbase and still had plenty of room for the company to grow in Texas.

After identifying the right market to pursue, Dan crafted a product vision statement, specifically including Texas, in collaboration with executive leadership to act as a guiding “north star” statement to direct and align the company’s product direction for the next 2-3 years.

Creating a vision statement was the first step in getting out of the Dilution Dilemma so the company could focus on better serving and expanding the strong and loyal customers in Texas. Finally, he worked with the sales and marketing teams to create a unique value proposition.

With a clear understanding of their target audience, market, a product vision statement, and a unique value proposition, Dan had laid a solid foundation for creating product strategy and roadmap.

Step 2: Planning a product strategy and roadmap

The next step in the process was to plan out the product strategy, product roadmap, and identify metrics for success aimed at driving growth for the Texas users identified in step one. To do that Dan:

1. Reclaimed product investments outside of the core Texas market to drive product investment in the Texas market.

2. Drove the development of a detailed understanding of the market, including competition.

3. Identified metrics that would be tracked as early indicators of success. For example, Net Promoter Score, which is a measure of customer loyalty.

4. Identified a core set of product enhancements that would be particularly valuable to the Texas market.

5. Formed and led a cross-functional team to design and build the set of enhancements identified in step two.

Once the product strategy was finalized with the executive leadership team Dan created a roadmap that detailed the product enhancements that were to be made.

Step 3: Build, release, and iterate with the development team

Dan then drove the development team to build against the roadmap. He communicated a fully aligned vision, strategy, and roadmap to them so that they not only understood what they were building, but why, and how it aligned to the overall product vision, strategy, and value proposition. This allowed the development team to contribute their own ideas to solving customer problems, meeting the value proposition, and achieving the product vision.

Dan drove the development team to deliver on the roadmap and tracked the measures of success along the way. He regularly met with customers and customer-facing internal teams to ensure that the enhancements were meeting their stated objectives and being well-received by customers.