#58 - It's Surprising How Much Small Teams Can Get Done - Sam Chaudhary of ClassDojo

**Craig Cannon** (0:00)
Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinator's podcast. Today's episode is with Sam Chaudhary and Karen Lien. Sam's the co-founder and CEO of ClassDojo, and Karen is an edtech principal here at YC.
So ClassDojo is a communication app for the classroom. They connect teachers, parents and students who use it to share photos, videos and messages throughout the school day.
And in this episode, we mentioned Imagine K12. So iK12 is an edtech accelerator, and they now make up YC's edtech vertical.
All right, here we go.

**Karen Lien** (0:34)
Well, I don't want to miss this story.

**Sam Chaudhary** (0:38)
You've got a sly grin.

**Craig Cannon** (0:40)
Yeah.

**Karen Lien** (0:43)
So, this is not the stringy best story. So little known fact, one of your first investors was Paul Graham of Y Combinator.
Can you tell us about that meeting? Yeah, what convinced PG to write you a check?

**Sam Chaudhary** (1:00)
Yeah, it was hilarious. The whole thing was hilarious, yeah. So, it was actually, it started at demo day, and I...

**Karen Lien** (1:08)
Imagine K-12 demo day. Imagine.
Invited guest.

**Sam Chaudhary** (1:13)
He was lucky to be invited, yeah, right.

**Karen Lien** (1:16)
Not running the show.

**Sam Chaudhary** (1:17)
Yes, so, and we'd gone, we'd presented last, and we'd been told the whole time that the goal was to meet lots of people and to get them to come by and talk to you, right? And so a good way to do that is to have good metrics, and we were lucky we had this good growth curve, but another way to do that is donuts. And so I had a box of donuts, and I said at the end that, hey, we're over there, there's a box of donuts on the table, you guys should come by.
And so the presentation's finished, and we were milling around, we were at our little stand thing, hoping that people would pop by. And who walks over, but PG. And he goes to Liam, he's like, hey, there's one of the metrics we showed, I think it was an engagement metric. He's like, I really like the look of that.

**Karen Lien** (2:08)
Do you remember what that was?

**Sam Chaudhary** (2:09)
I don't remember the exact one, I'm sure I've got it in the-

**Karen Lien** (2:12)
I think it was something about every three seconds.

**Sam Chaudhary** (2:15)
Oh, yeah, people giving feedback or something.

**Karen Lien** (2:17)
Rewarding feedback.

**Sam Chaudhary** (2:19)
Maybe, you remember better than I do. Yeah, I don't actually remember it. I've got it in the pitch deck somewhere. I'm sure you guys have it too. And so he's like, I really like that metric, can you show me what the growth curve in that looks like?
And Liam, I can't even imagine what was happening for Liam because he and I had read all of PG's essays for ages. This is like a legendary person turning up and just like having a normal conversation with you. And so poor Liam was just like, kind of like a holy shit. He's like, oh my God, like my idol is here or whatever. And Liam's like, well, I don't have it to hand, but I can pull it or whatever. And PG's like, oh yeah, you could just open Terminal and do it in there, right? And he's like, starts coaching him through it. And Liam's like, he's an amazing technology. He's very competent. Yeah, right? And he's like, oh yeah, yeah, I guess I'll just do that. But it's gonna take a while.
And the donuts kind of bit us in the ass. PG's like, that's okay, I'll just stand here and have a donut. And so you've got this like high pressure like data extraction happening for Liam. And in the end, Liam's like, look, better than this, I'll just email it to you like straight after this. And so Paul gives us his email address and he's like, that sounds good and walks away. And so we go home like breathlessly excited. I don't remember like the rest of what happened at Demo Day.
And we craft this email to PJ or Liam does. He's like, hey, here's the metric you want to look at the growth code, whatever. And we send it off and like nothing, like crickets. And we're like, I guess he wasn't like that interested. Like, it was just polite, right? But being relentless with this stuff, two days later, we email him again. And the numbers were small, so they're growing. We're like, look, it's growing like 3X and near two.
And again, like no answer. And we keep doing this for like, I think the best part of like a week, like every day or two, we're just emailing like another chart, another chart. And then, so from Liam's email, and then I get an email from Paul like a week later with one line there where he says, it is customary to respond to offers of funding.