Online bootcamp pioneers Springboard book more than $45m in revenue annually and have raised almost $70M in investment. Their revolutionary moment came when they introduced their Career Track product in 2016.
“It really changed the trajectory of the company,” says Parul Gupta. “Going from $3M revenue to where we are today – it improved our margins significantly, it got us to a much tighter product-market fit and it really accelerated our growth in a market which, at the time, wasn’t very crowded.”
Here, Parul explains the need for continuous discovery and the transformative effect of disrupting yourself, even once you have found initial PMF.
This interview was part of a series called Product-Market Fit Academy, run by Emerge in conjunction with our Venture Partner community – operators who have founded and led the biggest businesses in our market, including Duolingo, Udemy, Beamery, HiBob, WalkMe and OpenAI, representing a combined $1tn in market cap.
Here is what founders will get out of this conversation with Parul:
- The benefits of continuous discovery, even after finding initial PMF
- How to quickly test a hypothesis before committing
- How research can give you the confidence to take company-defining risks
- The importance of fostering a growth mindset in your team
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Springboard began as SlideRule in 2013, a search engine for the rapidly growing number of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). “Most of the action back then was around content,” remembers Parul. “When we surveyed our users, we found that they were struggling to find the right content for their needs.”
But soon Springboard pivoted to offering learning paths: curated courses that worked towards a particular job skillset, following the rapidly changing needs of its early adopters: “In startups, change is the only constant. Sometimes change can be triggered by the macro environment, especially if you’re in a space which is early and evolving.”
The next important ingredient was mentoring. By this time they had reached $3M in revenue and found initial product-market fit. But they knew they could do more.
Parul explains: “We realised that while our users had found that something worked for them, we still hadn’t met their primary motivation: getting a job.”
This insight guided them to something that at the time was revolutionary and a real differentiator: the job guarantee. “It really led to shaping the identity of the company that we have today.”
Find a north star with two-sided user research
So how did they create a culture of constant innovation?
“It’s something that you have to build the muscle to do,” says Parul, “and consciously keep doing as you’re growing at every stage.”
User research is an integral part of the process. One of the things that Springboard found most powerful was that when users describe a pain point, they need to really dig into what success would look like for them and use this as their North Star.
“For us, learners were asking for more career support. They really wanted a tangible impact on their career: a new job or a better job.”
The team started to noodle on the idea of a job guarantee, where students didn’t pay anything if they didn’t find a job. “Now that’s a bold promise,” says Parul “Especially in 2015. So we had to be sure whether it was feasible to deliver on that promise.”
To explore further, the team continued to research, but this time with employers. “We had a lot of conversations,” says Parul. “ And it gave us a really nuanced understanding of what employers were looking for. What did the ideal candidate look like? What aptitudes do they need? What sort of degrees or credentials did they ask for?”
The last point provides a great example of where research can help you find product-market fit.
Six years ago, the team discovered that employers demanded a degree and so they made this part of their entry criteria. “We had to make sure that before we go out and offer a job guarantee to our learners, we were able to deliver on the promise in this two-sided ecosystem. We needed to make sure that employees were ready to absorb the outcomes.”
At that time, there weren’t many data analyst or data science bootcamps – and none with the job guarantee. “This was a little scary,” says Parul. “We needed to understand, why hasn’t anybody thought about it? What are the real barriers to delivering the job outcomes? Are there other reasons why people weren’t doing it?”
The team eventually came to the conclusion that they were simply early and competitors hadn’t yet caught up with the opportunity they had uncovered. “It was scary. But it was also a big whitespace opportunity,” she says.
Things to apply:
- Find a North Star by understanding what success looks like for your users
- Research the needs of other participants in a marketplace to discover how you can best deliver on the promise
- Combine market analysis and research insights to try and understand if something is a genuine opportunity
Alpha testing
Before committing further, Springboard decided to test their hypothesis. They ran a pilot test with 10 volunteer students looking for a career transition, using some of their existing skills-based courses.
Even with this scrappy approach, the results were encouraging. Eight out of the 10 found jobs before they graduated.
“This gave us the confidence that the skills gap was large and our students would be successful, even with our current offering,” says Parul. The team decided to commit more resources, building the feedback from the Alpha into a Beta product.
“As a startup, you have to be really conscious that your resources are limited,” says Parul. “Build in a lean and scrappy way and only commit more once you get more confidence about your initial hypothesis.”
The price was relatively conservative, informed by more surveying about willingness to pay. But it was bringing in 3x the revenue of their existing offer without significantly more investment. They had found even tighter product-market fit.
Things to apply:
- Test with a small number of users with the right motivation before committing too many resources
- Be lean and scrappy to gain confidence around your hypothesis
- Use insights from your initial pilot to improve your product
Continuously disrupt yourself
To highlight the upside of never settling, Parul tells another story from a couple of years later in 2018, when Springboard’s fastest growing bootcamp was its UX programme.
“We could clearly see that there was more opportunity,” she remembers. “So we did a survey, asking our users what other courses they might be interested in taking. Like user interface design… The results were pretty surprising.”
The team found that there was significant interest in a combined UI and UX course that was longer and more expensive. “There was no precedent for it in the market,” says Parul. “And worst of all, according to our analysis, it would cannibalise up to 55% of our fastest growing bootcamp. There was a lot of resistance within the team. But it seemed pretty obvious to me that we had to do it.”
The programme quickly became their biggest, making up 45% of their revenue. “It was kind of scary, but it really paid off for us in the long term,” smiles Parul.
Things to apply:
- Do further research in areas where you are already experiencing success to uncover further opportunities
- If you are confident in your research findings, don’t be afraid to disrupt yourself
Growth mindset
“Continuous discovery needs a culture and mindset shift,” says Parul. “There’s no point where you say, ‘Okay, I’m done. And now I know exactly what to do and I’m going to keep doing it.’ It is very, very important for founders and leaders to cultivate a growth mindset.”
She says that you should look for ‘learning agility’ when you hire. You want a team who say: “we are always a work in progress, we are not what we are today but we can evolve.”
Her top tips:
- Remember that product-market fit is NOT a one-time exercise
- Build systems and processes to keep uncovering unmet needs
- Macro trumps micro – keep your heads up, not heads down
- Don’t be afraid to take (calculated) risks – disrupt yourself
- Foster the right culture for continuous discovery
“There’s a lot of uncovered or untapped growth opportunities that you can find by listening to your users,” she smiles. “Even when you’re an established company, you need to continue thinking about what’s relevant today for today’s consumers and build for that.”
