How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS by Selling to Schools

**Lucas** (0:01)
You hear a lot about selling SaaS to enterprises, to SMBs, to consumers. But there's one market that operates on its own rhythm entirely, K-12 schools.

**Luna** (0:12)
Yeah, and it's not just about the product, it's about the calendar, the budget cycles, the whole procurement dance. It's a beast.

**Lucas** (0:21)
Right. And that's exactly what we're digging into today.
The story of a solo founder who built a SaaS by selling to schools, and not just any schools, but public K-12 districts in the US.

**Luna** (0:33)
Before we get into it, and this ties in, we deliberately keep the show ad-free. No sponsors, no mid-roll interruptions. If you find these conversations useful for what you're building, and you want to support that choice, the link is by meacoffee.com/fexingo.
It's a simple way to keep the show exactly what it is.

**Lucas** (0:54)
Yeah, totally. And honestly, it frees us up to talk about whatever angle matters. No product placement, no bending the story. So back to schools. The founder we're talking about is Jenna Ortiz.
She was a middle school science teacher in Texas for about seven years.

**Luna** (1:12)
And she built ClassPulse, a tool that gives teachers real-time feedback on student engagement during a lesson. Not another grade book, not another LMS.
Just a simple pulse check.

**Lucas** (1:24)
Exactly.
She built the first version in 2022 using no-code tools, irritable as the back end, a simple web front end. She tested it in her own classroom. And within a year, she had 12 other teachers in her district using it for free.

**Luna** (1:41)
But the leap from free in your district to paid across districts, that's where most founders stall. What did she do differently?

**Lucas** (1:50)
She realized that individual teachers love the tool, but they rarely have budget. The money lives at the district level.
So she had to sell up to principals, to curriculum directors, to superintendents. And that's a completely different playbook.

**Luna** (2:06)
What's the first thing she did? Cold emails? Demos?

**Lucas** (2:10)
She started with what she calls the pilot loop. She'd find a teacher who was already using the free version, then ask that teacher to introduce her to their principal.
If the principal saw enough teacher adoption, they'd fund a pilot for the whole school.

**Luna** (2:27)
So she basically used grassroots adoption as leverage.
Smart. But pilots can drag on. How long were these cycles?

**Lucas** (2:36)
Her average from first contact to a paid contract was about seven months. And that's if the timing lined up with the district's budget cycle. Most districts in Texas have a fiscal year that starts July 1st.
If you miss that window, you wait a year.

**Luna** (2:53)
Ouch. So she had to time her pilots to end right before the budget approval. That's like choreography.

**Lucas** (3:00)
Exactly. She also learned to target schools with Title I funding, federal money for low-income schools. Those schools have more flexibility to spend on tools that improve student outcomes. She made sure her messaging aligned with Title I goals.
Engagement, formative assessment, closing achievement gaps.

**Luna** (3:21)
So she's not just selling a product. She's selling compliance with a funding stream. That's a different kind of value prop.

**Lucas** (3:28)
Right. And she built that into her website and her pitch.
She even published a one-page PDF showing how ClassPulse maps to specific Title I spending categories. It's a document, not a feature list.

**Luna** (3:42)
That's a great takeaway for any founder selling into regulated or grant-funded markets. Make it easy for them to say yes by showing the money fits.

**Lucas** (3:52)
The other thing she did, she offered a summer prep pilot, free access from June through August, so teachers could set up their classrooms and get familiar before the school year. Then when September hit, she'd ask for the purchase order.

**Luna** (4:07)
That's clever because summer is usually dead for schools. No one's buying, but teachers are planning, so she turns a downtime into a nurturing period.

**Lucas** (4:18)
Exactly. And she automated the onboarding with a simple email sequence, no sales calls needed during summer, that kept her overhead near zero while she was still working her day job.

**Luna** (4:30)
Wait, she kept teaching while building this?

**Lucas** (4:34)
For the first 18 months, yes.
She'd code in the evenings and on weekends, handle sales calls during her planning period, the whole Lean Founder Playbook. She didn't go full time until she had 15 paying school contracts, which was about $60,000 in annual recurring revenue.

**Luna** (4:52)
That's a sustainable threshold. And 15 schools is not huge, but it's proof that the model works.
How many schools is she at now?