#35: Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB)

-- AI-Generated Transcript --

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:00:00]: Honestly, it's sort of like sticking around until your moment happens Land that's what kind of happened to us. Right place, right time, knowing how to pivot, being ready to pivot, willing to risk it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:13]: Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to The Lay of the Land podcast Where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I'm your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Kate Volzer, who is The cofounder and CEO of Wisr. Wisr is an education technology company that specializes in building affinity between prospective of and colleges. And in March of 2021, EAB, which is a key player in the education industry, announced its acquisition of Weiser in a move to further EAB's efforts to help schools and students find, learn about, and interact with each other. Wisr, which Kate had cofounded back in 2016, has grown rapidly since the company began, building private online communities for Colleges that enable students to connect with peers and campus leaders.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:15]: Prospective students use the platforms to get a sense of what life is like at a given School and to find friends and mentors with similar interests. And the technology also enables faculty to offer guidance on majors and classes While giving institutions a direct channel for delivering personalized content to interested students. I of learning about Kate's Reflections on transitioning post acquisition to EAB and working through all the challenges she encountered taking Weiser from an idea To an exit. I hope you all enjoy my conversation with Kate Polser. I was thinking about the best place to start this conversation, and I got excited because most everyone that we've had on to share their own Entrepreneurial stories are very much captured by the startup and scale up life cycle stages of company growth, Whereas you have this perspective on the post acquisition stage of your journey. And so I'd love to kinda Start at the end, if you will, in the present moment, and then loop our way back around. But kind of reflecting on the totality of your journey here, You know, what have been the most salient takeaways from having your company acquired, you know, thinking about the mission that you set out on and and the vision that That you still have.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:02:33]: So EAB The acquired us was the biggest company that I thought might acquire us When I made our 1st pitch deck. So it's kinda cool to see yeah. I know. I, like, I should go back and try and find that original deck, but I remember they had just done A 6 figure acquisition, high 6 figure acquisition of another company, which interestingly we're now in that division of The, basically into this tech enabled marketing services division for enrollment. And at the time we were doing something in alumni and career. I was like, well, it's probably a big leap to get over there to where it would make sense, But they're a big enough player in higher ed where I could see it happening someday. And so it's totally surreal. And regularly I wake up and I'm just like, I can't believe it worked and I can't believe it happened.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:03:30]: But then as I'm Land I'm only, I think 3 months, 4 months out, I think from acquisition. But I've finally gotten myself to a point where I'm not obsessed anymore with Wisr. I still care deeply about education and making education a better Lay. But, like this morning, I had a coffee, I worked out for an hour. I didn't really obsess over what was happening in my email inbox. And we had to reschedule this because I've been a little negligent when it comes to email, but it feels really, really good, to take a second to just After it was only 5 years, it wasn't that long, but like a 5 years of just Stern, you know, when you're the only person at the beginning of the company. If you aren't doing something, The thing isn't moving forward. And it's super nice to be in a place where now we're a part of a big company where if I take time off or need to take time off, want to take time off.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:04:28]: It doesn't Stern. And it's really cool to be in that sort of environment now. So it wasn't like The. Really after acquisition, I was still, I think, running like a zillion miles a minute and I'm not a runner. But my boss's boss was like, you need to sort of like you need to chill out Land embrace it a little bit and slow down. And so I sort of mourned the loss of Wisr knowing that I wouldn't be in the driver's seat anymore. And that was before we signed the red Cleveland then before I signed the letter of intent. And then immediately after signing, there's this like excitement, right, because it's a major transaction, you're working on it, there's press.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:05:09]: And then afterwards, there's this whole integration period where there is a transition. I mean, you sort of have to slow down to speed up And we're still in the slowing down to speed up phase, I think of Wisr inside of EAB. But then the personal side of it is I actually hired a morning coach to help me figure out what to do outside of work hours because it was always wake up Land immediately check my email, immediately Start working Land maybe I would work out, probably not. Best case I'd make a a pour over and that was my morning time for me, but it's totally different. So I feel really great, and I'm, you know, planning some trips. We're doing our exit trip to California, the founders, the Wisr founders. We actually leave Friday and Westmore.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:54]: Oh, very nice.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:05:55]: Napa all next week. That's exactly what I wanted. I really wanted to be able to go and just buy a bunch of wine Land that was the like one thing outside, maybe it sounds silly, I don't know, that was my

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:08]: No. No. That that's fantastic.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:06:10]: Really, like, luxurious wine trip.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:13]: I'm excited you get to you get to do that and and celebrate.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:06:16]: Well, now I sound like a jerk, though.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:18]: No. Well, we could go through, you know, the

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:06:21]: But every entrepreneur has their thing that they wanna do, right? Like Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:24]: You

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:06:24]: must have your thing that you wanna do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:27]: Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I'm spending a lot of time on on my own company right now. But I mean, it It has to take a lot of prescience, foresight to kind of call out the, you know, EAB as an acquirer as you're starting the company in in some way.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:06:43]: Well, I mean, education is a it's a known marketplace, and EAB was the largest and still is like the largest private equity backed company. So thank you for thinking that, but that's the hard thing about education. It's a big small, market where if you don't acquired by a certain few, then you need to grow big enough to grow outside of the education landscape.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:05]: So let's dive into to WISER and the story and catching up To to the present moment and trips to Napa and all the all the fun stuff.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:07:14]: Call me next Wednesday.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:18]: So where where does your interest in in entrepreneurship stem from?

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:07:23]: Yeah. So, I was born in Northeast Ohio between Akron and Canton, and I grew up this matters. I grew up on 8 and a half acres of land, cornfield, cornfield, woods, neighbor around me. I think I'm 3rd generation entrepreneur, but brick and mortar, like very blue collar. So my dad's family had an office supply shop and I always heard about Bear's Office Supply in Canton. And then My mom, her family didn't have a whole lot of money, so when she was in high school, she went to cosmetology school and got her hair license Land And she started working into 18, opened her 1st salon at 21. I think she was maybe 28 ish or 30 ish when she had me. And I have a couple brothers too, but growing up, she always took me to the salon, had me check people out, count the deposits.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:08:14]: I loved counting the deposits. Land she just was always teaching. I don't know that she was doing it intentionally, maybe she was, but management skills, general operations of business. When she would get a call, sometimes you have to leave something to go fix something at the salon. And now she employs like 50 or so women. But I just remember growing up and watching her and thinking, man, I really Wanna do something like that when I grow up Land I was obsessed with inventing something when I was, you know, in, I wanted to make money Land I was obsessed with inventing things between 8 Land, I don't know, 15. I remember being very young, sitting at the end of my parents' driveway, I wanted to go into business Land I was convinced that in order to do that, I needed to have golf clubs. And I didn't have enough money saved up.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:09:05]: I I'm not kidding. I I remember sitting at the end of the driveway trying to sell lemonade to buy my 1st set of golf clubs. I negotiated with my mom. She would pay 50% of the golf clubs, if I could get the match, and there was no traffic. Land I was like, my God, wouldn't it be easier if I could just invent something awesome like the light bulb? I remember sitting out there. Eventually she took me to the, it's The flea market in Hartville, like a giant marketplace, giant garage sale. I loved going there because you could always wheel and deal. But I sold all of my beanie babies Land knew the value of them.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:09:41]: Got my mom to match to get my golf clubs, and then I guess then I did business. Land so I think from I just like The, I just always wanted to build something. I've always liked being in the driver's seat. I've always liked negotiating. I love making deals Land it's fun and energizing for me even when it's hard.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:59]: Yeah. So you got you got your golf clubs. Mhmm. Yeah. The the mark of Lay. That's good. It I'm I'm it's, I respect that. So

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:10:10]: And, like, pretty good.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:10]: Requires a deal of patience.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:10:12]: Swampy at hole 11, so I'm pretty good for, like, 3 holes.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:17]: As long as you're having fun.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:10:19]: Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:19]: So, you know, kind of cultivating that entrepreneurial mindset, Mhmm. Maybe, you know, fast forwarding a bit to the the point of, you know, ideation for for Wisr.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:10:31]: Mhmm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:32]: Where where does that idea come from?

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:10:35]: So The arc, neither of my parents went to college. I played volleyball in high school. And I did play golf for a hot minute, but it didn't it didn't continue as we're better at volleyball. So I got recruited to go play at the University of Chicago, and There I was in school with a lot of people from extremely elite backgrounds and, like, hyper connected who could phone a friend and get an internship super easily. My 1st job out of undergrad was working for the admissions office. So Started to learn higher ed, I worked there for 5 years, climbed pretty quickly through the ranks, and then was told I needed to either have an advanced degree or spend more time in a role before I could move up another level. Land I'm a list checker offer, and so I was like, okay, fine, I'll go. I went back to school and I got my MBA at Chicago Booth.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:11:23]: I started studying entrepreneurship there Land was like, Gosh. So this is the thing that I I just didn't really until The. I mean, this is like Facebook had just made it so that everybody could log in, I think my sophomore year of college. And so this was the beginning of, I think like the beginning of kind of the normalization of Entreprenuership, and tech entrepreneurship. So when I was in business school, I was like, well, this is pretty cool, but I also had a mentor that did private wealth management Land I was sort of studying finance Land I had it in my head that I wanted to go work at Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan. And I did, I mean like somewhere around like 30 or so coffee chats per firm Land eventually got offered a job at JP Morgan, but like, My God, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to just be able to call somebody versus network and then talk to the next person? Land I enjoy networking, don't get me wrong, but it was a lot, lot of work to finally get to the point where I was connected enough where I could advocate for myself. So I thought, Why the heck isn't there a piece of software? Like if I'm paying this much to go to Booth, if I'm paying this much to go to the University of Chicago, shouldn't I be able to access my alumni network a lot easier. And so that was the idea for Wisr.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:12:37]: But that didn't surface until so I had I created a company sort of, I don't know if you would I mean, I tried to start something. It had a name. Mhmm. Visit coordinator, which was all about scheduling these visits for college admissions counselors from universities The come to visit high schools in the fall to recruit kids to apply. So that whole process, there was a whole back and forth scheduling. The short version of the story is it's a feature, not a product. Land during that I quickly realized The, wow, Stern really mattered and there was so much that I didn't know about running a company and so much that I didn't know that I didn't know. So before jumping in to start another thing, I knew that I wanted to come back close to home.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:13:21]: And I'm, you know, being close to family mattered to me a lot. And everybody was like, you're crazy for wanting to move to Cleveland. I'm like, well, you know what? I don't know anyone in San Francisco and I really don't like Manhattan. I like visiting. I'll go to Broadway shows and do the touristy stuff, but not my vibe, I'm a Midwesterner at heart. And I was missing a lot of holidays and birthday parties and just everything, and I wanted to come home. So chose to come home, but I wasn't going to just jump into anything. I really wanted to find, well, figure out if there were startups here because I'm convinced someday that I'm gonna start a company.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:13:58]: I just need to like find the right people to start a company with who know more than me So I don't do what I did with visit coordinator again. And I networked all day at this event. I guess it was a startup networking event. And eventually I met John Knifick, who at the time was the CEO. I know that people can't see it, but for dramatic effect, I actually have the notebook and I keep it here.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:24]: Oh, wow.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:14:24]: And this is like proof of life here, but I have the notes from When I came, I met with Linane Greece at, a coffee shop over on the east side. And, Linane told me this list of people that I should meet with. And John Kanifik's name is like the first one that I wrote down.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:43]: There it is.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:14:44]: Yep. John Kanifik at decision desk, Charlie Stack at flash starts, Jennifer Neundorfer. I don't know who Reg Binder was, Remesh Streamlink, Dan Gilbert at Bizdom, Thinkbox from CASE, and then some other things that are eligible. But John Canific was at the top of my list and he showed up at the end of the Lay. And I almost missed my flight because we started talking and went over to, I think it's called like Albatross over on Case Western's campus, bonded over liking the same kinds of Manhattan cocktail with The cherries. And it was at the time it was bullet ride because Berlin was on its rise. So I just thought he was so smart, so kind Land I was so impressed that he started his 1st company when he was 21 in college Land I just was like, this is the Land of guy that he's not Lay the time he wasn't the kind of guy that You know, I would have gone to I don't know. He doesn't do sports bars.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:15:44]: Like, now he sort of does sports bars, but, like, we were very different in a complimentary kind of way, and I would just was drawn to his. They were working in education, Decision Desk was doing admission software. I had an admissions background coming from business school. I was like, I'm a unicorn. I'm perfect for this job, John. So he gave me, an offer 3 weeks later to come in and do BDR work, prospecting sales. And I was like, I just got my MBA. This is sort of like a slap in the face with, like, you know, from The is a slap in the face a little bit with the role, but I was like, Fine.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:16:17]: I'm gonna sell the crap out of this thing, and I did. And we we grew, and then we raised more money. Eventually, I I moved up higher and started working on more strategic deals and, larger contracts. About 18 months or so into that was when I started to learn more about student success, graduation, Land retention at of, and I thought, I think that's the next big problem that higher ed needs to tackle. I have plenty of cousins that started college and stopped out, and I was convinced that the reason that they started and stopped out is because they just weren't quite sure what their degree would mean for them in the real world. And that's really hard to know unless you talk to somebody on a job because every company's different, every role is sort of different, every culture is different. And so I was like, okay, there's a way to do The. And there are safe conversations to have, which is with alumni.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:17:10]: And then John at the time was negotiating his exit from decision desk and they were executing a search for a new CEO to come in because he wanted to do something else. He had been in the role for 8 years. And I was like, well, do you wanna come be a co founder at Wisr? And he said yes. Eventually we recruited Chris, who's our 3rd cofounder. Only a couple months Lay, I mean, we eventually, Everybody was a co founder and divided everything up equally because just wanted everybody to be on the same page when starting Land it ended up being a great team. We're still friends. We are all vacationing together next week, and I'm The to vacation with those guys and their wives. Just it's a it was a really good story.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:55]: Yeah. So in those early days Land of having recognized the problem, how is it that you went about Working towards some kind of solution. Yeah. Some offering to the market.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:18:07]: So there was this phase before I was willing to actually jump in, which was, I wanna make sure that people are gonna buy this.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:15]: Yeah. An important question.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:18:17]: Yeah. So I phoned a friend at the University of Chicago, and paid for my flight there and pitched the idea. And on the spot, they were like, yeah, we'd be in. Absolutely. And so there was a level of catching up that needed to happen. I made wireframes right in quotes because it was balsamic mockups. But we Took those to University of Chicago, Case Western. Those were ones where we had some pretty decent inroad connections out of the gate, but then I spent some of my money to buy just like Kate personal money at the time because there's no it was like if you're going for it, well

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:53]: Yeah, yeah.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:18:54]: I saved a lot of money at decision desk knowing that I was gonna probably jump out at some point. So I had a list of 500 or so schools, combed through them Land was like, okay, this Could be somebody that might be able to provide some valuable advice. I just called people until we got up to 5 customers. It was the University of Chicago, Case Western, Denison, Cedarville University, and then Oberlin. They were our first 5 customers. And For, Cedarville is the only one that's not a customer today, but the rest are still customers of Wisr. In the questions ahead, it was, what was this codevelopment process like? Well, John and I, there is another company that's in the industry that's a student success software platform, and They had initially gotten 5 customers and gotten a lot of feedback from the marketplace about how they would build the product, just listen to the customers instead of presuming what they believe to be true would actually be true. So we had a summit in Chicago where a summit.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:20:01]: It was in, the conference room in the admissions office at the University of Chicago, major thank you to the University of Chicago and to Jim Nondorf in particular, there who was a big help throughout all of this. But he and then Meredith Daw, who was the head of the career center, they're offered to host the summit and everybody came Land Chris at the time had gotten us an MVP, which the MVP was like a phone a phone calling feature, which I was like, this is a total game changer. This is it. We're gonna be huge. Like 1 tiny feature, which is so funny in hindsight. Because like every milestone feel I mean, you're just in the The in the trenches all the time in every little Yeah. Thing. Like I I was the one that was always really good at celebrating Land You know, the guys would absolutely join in, but they'd be like, that's not that big of a deal.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:20:52]: I'm like, you realize that it's not gonna be that big of a deal until we sign the paperwork to exit it someday if you keep up like this The sort of

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:01]: energy. Yeah. It's important to celebrate the the ones

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:21:04]: along the way. Yeah. I'm a celebrator. And you know what's funny is The because we exited in COVID, when you when you sign over the company digitally, it was like our lawyers came together and Yeah. There was this the counsel from the company, it was like, I certify this transaction, and I would said, I certify this transaction, and like a a big loser, I was like, woo. I drank champagne that day and then I had lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings. I have no idea why I'm public confessing this, but I just like to know that COVID times. The is what a weird time to exit.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:21:41]: But

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:41]: Of, what a strange time.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:21:44]: Picking up for it in Napa. We didn't even see each other in person that day. I didn't even see my cofounders.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:52]: That's wild. So at, you know, at my own company, I think a lot about The codevelopment approach, focusing early on on a high number, a small number rather of of highly Relevant users up front to kind of address their specific pain points and and get that feedback

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:22:08]: Yep.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:08]: And and build to what is ultimately that, like, Generally extensible line to of the rest of the market. And I Yeah. I found it's it is a pretty powerful, approach in the early days for for Stern ups.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:22:22]: I agree. I think an important bullet point The, though, is those early customers are going to get used to a level of service that is not necessarily scalable.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:30]: Mhmm.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:22:31]: So we, gosh, ran around for a very long time doing everything for our customers, like uploading lists. Even though we would try and teach them how to upload the list, They would, you know, send the list back to our customer success team, and we would do it for them because, you know, we wanted to have this high level of service. So, you know, as you scale, I can sort of There's almost this, the team would never let me go in front of customers because I'm too nice and we would have never made any money. I would have given it all away for free. But there was like this level of just like do it for them that you can't do in the long run because it's just not financially sustainable. So that's my only caution. Love the approach out of the gate. We learned a ton from our customers and they are those core 5, I think, and the foundation of who we eventually became.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:23:18]: So over the arc of Weiser's life, we eventually, So we ended primarily as Land admissions community building tool. So we were building community amongst current students and alumni for networking opportunities. But just ahead of COVID actually, there was this whole code of ethics change related to recruitment at universities where a school couldn't recruit a kid away once they'd enrolled Land compete for them on a financial basis. And so now that's no longer in Lay. And so my argument ahead of COVID was coming out saying like, okay, well, you've spent all this money recruiting Students, why would you ever stop communicating with them? Historically, what would happen is the admissions office would say, it's May 1st. You've committed to where you're going to school, and school starts in August or September. And in the summary, you get some emails, but you don't really get to know your classmates unless you're on Facebook. And now it's moving into Snap.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:24:17]: Discord is the new one that I find fascinating, The it's sort of like, To me, it's like AOL Instant Messenger.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:24]: Yeah. Pseudo anonymous chat rooms.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:24:26]: Like, you realize that we did this already. Mhmm. Cool that you've got a new thing, but been The. And I'm keeping my side part. You don't get to understand that joke. There's a whole lot of Of.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:36]: That is Yeah. Oh, really?

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:24:37]: Yeah. No. The Gen z is trying to take away the side part from the millennials Land I identify. I mean, I'm absolutely a millennial. I tried the mid part yesterday and I can't do it. Anyway, over the summer, stay in touch with students as they show up on campus. This is the time when they're most excited. There's something called Summer Melt, which is kids that say that they're going to enroll in college eventually don't enroll for some reason or another.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:25:04]: And the theory of the case for us coming in was that we could reduce that drop off rate, that summer melt number. And we did by 20% year over year with the University of Chicago, now asterisk, right, they don't have a retention problem. That's not a problem they were necessarily trying to solve. But it was a nice byproduct, and it was something that We opportunistically brought to market and ended up getting like 5 or 6 more customers. And this was, kind of bridge between admissions and orientation. But The, you know, the cruise ship is docked outside of, I forget where it was, station with these people with this mysterious illness. Yes. And then Fast forward to February, I think, I have the email somewhere, February or early March.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:25:50]: Stanford and University of Washington were the The 2 universities to send kids home, close their campuses for the rest of semester. And I was like, man, this is the busy time for recruitment. How are they going to fill their classes? And so I sent an email to Jim Nondorf, my old boss at the University of Chicago, and I was like, Hey, Jim. To the networking, you'd be good at networking, it helps. I'm like, Hey, Like, do any of your friends need help with this recruitment online thing? I think we can help them because there wasn't like, I mean, Wisr was positioned really well-to-do it. There wasn't exactly, like, software to do online recruitment. It's sort of like wait around until there's an opportunity and take advantage of not take advantage of it in a bad way, but like seize the moment.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:36]: Right, right.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:26:37]: And so we ended up getting like 20 new customers in March. It was insane. We quadrupled. And then, oh, I guess a year later from the start of COVID till not even a year, 11 months after the start of COVID, we were acquired by EAB and had added like, I don't know, 50 or so customers. It was nuts. And at the time that we were growing Yeah. It there were 6 people at the company, Anna Masika, another one of your fellow Venture For America members. She just was like, all right, rolled up our Cleveland her and John launched, I think, 20 customers.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:27:16]: Corey Pender and I were selling. Chris Ciccarello, our CTO, was the only, engineer at the time, and Grace Fry, another VFAer, was still at the company Land she was just like everybody was just doing whatever it took to be successful. And it was a total team effort. Land literally, I just got goosebumps thinking about it. It was nuts. And it was also really nice because wow, what a stressful time in the world. I was so grateful to be on the opposite, like on the good side of busy in COVID with work. I don't know how I would've done without that.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:27:50]: I wish I had something more than like, you know, I got lucky because I always hate The, but It was like smart luck to be able to work with

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:00]: The have the the the product and software Yeah. And to be able to have Land all the

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:28:05]: to solve the problem. And The was I because I had planned all the events that when I was at the University of Chicago, I'd planned the events that they had to move online and that whole spring programming that happens to recruit and yield kids, I knew exactly what it was because I spent 5 years of my life planning it. And our clients are awesome today. We work with Well, it's gonna grow a lot more with The, and honestly, I'm a little bit Stern From, Weiser Stern today, the product, I sit on like an advisory committee for it at EAB related to The strategy, but I moved into a different seat where now I do strategic relationships with external partners who can help us to identify more college bound first time freshmen, and then people that are seeking to reenroll in college because it's really hard to find people Northeast like testing is optional when you apply to college. Historically, universities just purchased names from the ACT or SAT Land that's how they identify kids to recruit. And that's kinda gone because fewer people are taking the test. So I'm trying to solve that. It's very much a startup again.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:09]: Yeah. That that is a that is a pretty foundational shift in The

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:29:13]: That's massive. Process.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:14]: One one of the more, like, macro level things The I would I really wanted to get your perspective on was just the overall, like, affinity towards innovation in the in the education space. Because, you know, at a high level, taking a step back, I feel like we call out often healthcare and education as 2 of these places where, you know, the costs Rise kind of exponentially over time, and they've been of 2 of the areas at an industry level where, you know, we don't see necessarily the Consumer technology adoption that that we see in in Land of the rest of our our lives. And, I'm curious, you know, Having grown and built this company and and now being on the the flip side of it, where does innovation in in the education space come from from A technology perspective.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:30:00]: Historically, I think it was out of necessity Land I think that COVID accelerated a lot of the necessity. It was like 5 year plans coming forward. Now I think that more folks. So most people that work in higher education, a lot of them were like me, right? You came straight out of undergrad and you go work for the school that you were at. So you don't really have this like consumer or corporate experience of what some of like really awesome pieces of technology that you get to interact with at at a corporation versus a higher education institution. You don't know how good it could be. So there hasn't historically been a whole lot of comfort in unplugging or plugging in new products and unplugging them. And I think that's probably because the way that success is measured in higher education is on an annual basis.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:30:53]: So it's Lay to the academic year, whereas business, it's corporations, it's a quarterly metric. And yeah, you have your trip full year, but there's more shorter term measures of urgency, I suppose. But so now, I mean, my my neighbor is the she's a 2nd grade teacher Land she's the technology coordinator for K to 3, I think, in, the school district that I live in. And even she, like now, they're testing more new software this year in in her classroom so that in the next year, they can start to bring in more VR y type things into the classroom. She's got this new tech board, I'm not as familiar with k 12, but I will say that I have been really impressed with education in this last year, with all the curve balls that were thrown to The. Right? So in addition to having to move everything online, fundamentally changing the way that you shape your class, select students and how they apply. Getting rid of test scores as a requirement is a big deal. Most schools it's not like a hard cutoff, but it's like a major factor in kind of standardizing, you know, normalizing a score across a community.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:32:08]: Now, obviously, there's a whole lot of debate on like how good standardized tests are or aren't, but Right. It is a factor that helps you get contacts when you've never been to Lima, Ohio. Like, how do you know that the kid there that is acing all of their AP exams or, you know, getting an a in AP physics, Their A is the same as the kid getting an A in AP physics in Cleveland. It's really hard unless there's some sort of standard because a teacher could let you retake tests and you could get an Lay. So how do you know they're gonna be successful? So fundamentally changing the way that you make business decisions in addition to how you are operating. And I think everybody kind of went through that. Well, maybe not everybody because we didn't Why is it gonna have to change? We had moved remote in January because we just wanna try it out. So our it was like business as usual for us.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:33:01]: So I can't imagine outside of like the emotional trauma of COVID, which is a big thing Land it's still happening. Just big shifts all around. So I applaud higher ed. I think our clients did a phenomenal job and they're still tweaking what we built today. I think trying to figure out what that looks like in the long run, Most of our clients are planning to use Wisr forever to give more opportunity to kids who can't necessarily afford to fly to a university to go visit it during the decision to enroll or not. I think that Land of stuff's cool. I I was impressed with higher ed. I don't know how health care did.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:38]: Yeah. No. I I mean, I think I think kind of across the board, we've like you said, the the 5 year plans have been 5 years passed in the last year Land Yeah. Or just where we thought we were going.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:33:50]: A lot of the conversations I had were we've been thinking about doing this for so long, but we weren't planning to get there for another 3 to 5 years. And I was like, wow, when right? There's The How I Built This podcast when everybody I always thought it was so cliche, the getting lucky. Honestly, it's sort of like sticking around until your moment happens Land that's what kind of happened to us. Right place, right time, knowing how to pivot, being ready to pivot, willing to risk it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:22]: I think a lot of Entreprenuership is staying alive long enough to continue to like Be able to ask questions and Yeah. And and find that opportunity.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:34:32]: Yeah. I get asked by a lot of new entrepreneurs. It's like, how do you know when your idea is going to work or not. And I'm like, well, let me tell you about life wiser. I mean, like what we ended up doing is not what we started doing. And we do have Actually, not entirely what we like, 10% of what we started doing was what we had been doing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:52]: How do you relinquish The things that you set out to do that you are no longer doing, like the process of letting those things go in pursuit of the new opportunity, like How do you manage those pivots?

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:35:05]: It's so hard to remain disciplined. And when things were working, you know, kinda like Lay, what John, Chris, and I did as a cofounding group, we always went back through all of our, expenses and just made sure to cut everything that we, like, could cut all the time, and all of the, like, little Stern, SaaS subscriptions. Give yourself enough runway and space, so make sure you have money. The second thing that We would always do is make sure that we were tracking core business metrics Land we learned this later on. There was a time period where I totally overspent, had to reduce head count and burn. It was just like the worst time of my life as a professional. I don't wanna ever do that again. But so focusing on the core metrics of what is going to make your business successful? What are healthy metrics? So revenue per headcount, and then making sure that you're documenting what tests you're going to run, and that you have a timeline for referencing back.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:36:05]: And when you're doing that, it makes it a lot easier to be objective about calling, you know, calling a pivot or making a business change. That's like super abstracted.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:16]: Yeah. How do you know you're measuring the right things?

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:36:19]: I guess you don't. I mean, like, you're the closest to your business. You gotta make your best best judgment. I think that's the a really big mistake that people make is leaning too heavily on Stern. And I think too, like, the overconfidence of investors coming into they're not operating the business on a day to day basis. They're not seeing the numbers like you're seeing the numbers. They're not the ones waking up in the middle of the night. So, when you fly in and give advice and then, you know, Lay, if you don't do it, you're not gonna, like, be successful.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:36:53]: It's just like and, actually, like, a lot of angel investors in conversations would say stuff like that. I'm like, cool. Well, this isn't gonna be a good fit, I'm gonna move on to the next person. The best kinds of investors that I had were actually on my board of advisors, Carrie Jaros, phenomenal leader. She's so smart, she has a framework for everything, and she never ever told me what to do. She gave me frameworks and asked me to apply those frameworks versus saying versus assuming that she knew more about the education landscape or how to operate the startup that I was in charge of. And that is like she was great.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:34]: Yeah. I systems thinking is extensible. I think that that makes a lot of sense, those frameworks. Do you do what do you remember what some of those frameworks were? I'm just curious.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:37:43]: Of, my gosh. Honestly, the one that stands out was like the take the exit or not take the exit because that was fresh in Land because it was a big I mean, I literally had like a stack of term sheets for series a The like it would've been super fun to run that company. Some really great new investors that I was excited to work with. And then just kind of I'm only 34, so being able to have an exit at 34, there's a lot of time left in my career to go out and do something else. I am planning to stay at EAB. I'm very excited about it. And and what we're gonna do there and how we're gonna grow it with our PE backers. I know it sounds like a commercial, but, like, genuinely, the people there are so nice.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:38:26]: They're as nice as they were. Like, I thought they I thought maybe it was like fake nice because they wanted to buy our company, but they're really actually nice. So the I mean, it was like just straight up net present value calculations. It's like, what do you think you can exit for in the future versus, you know, what are you gonna do today? Like, It's important for a founder to do that to separate yourself from the emotional side of like, well, it's a personal decision. Honestly, if you wanted to swing for it and go for it and take the risk. Like, I don't know. Money doesn't have to always be the end all be all for deciding to run a company. I mean, if you're taking it, so it's like I can flip back and forth all the time and see both sides.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:39:06]: But as CEO, I I had a fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders and the exit made sense financially for everybody. Could we have gone and grown on our own? Probably, but there's a lot of room for error. I don't know. I wish I had a crystal ball. Designing different companies all the time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:28]: Right. I I would as well with the crystal ball. Yeah. With the acquisition to EAB, is is there a maintenance of Weiser's brand and and culture, or is there An assimilation process that is transpiring for, you know, the kind of experience that consumers get working with Wisr, Land, I'm just curious, that kind of transition as well.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:39:51]: At the time of acquisition wise, there was 20 people and we fold in into a company of 1500 people.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:58]: Yeah.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:39:59]: So The for context. And I think we maybe had around a 100 or so customers Land EAB overall has 2,200 customers. So that's just The the context for the scale. Weiser's brand is Staying around, Wisr is a product that is offered in Enroll 360, which is, this like full solution for admissions recruitment. So that includes digital communications, print communications, virtual campus tours, community building, and then identification of students to recruit. So it like everything that you could possibly need to run an enrollment including financial aid as well. EAB does or can do for universities. The kind of long term vision for how Wisr The product is maintained throughout the company.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:40:52]: There are a lot of areas that we can go. I think EAB sees that in general, which is it's of fun to sit on the kind of advisory committee for Wisr. There are lots of ideas. There's no shortage of ideas for how we will Yeah. Grow and expand the product. It's more of, like, what's the right thing right now? How do we honor the relationships that we have with our existing clients and make sure that their experience is better? Because EAB had also, So in The 18, we were the last of 4 acquisitions that happened over 18 months. So there's like this whole, a lot of people figuring out what it's like to work at a large scale company for the 1st time startups. There's 1 company that was bigger, but still it's like everybody's, Most of the acquired people are remote.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:41:36]: We have some larger scale offices on the East Coast in Richmond Land DC, which I look forward to meeting them. I've never met anybody from EAB in real life. It's so nuts. I and,

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:49]: It's wild.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:41:50]: Yeah. We're going back to in person offices, a hybrid work experience starting mid September. So I think I'll go out to DC Land Richmond and meet some people Land hopefully some of them will come out to Cleveland. My boss's boss is coming, and I've, like, given him a whole list of what we're gonna do when we come back.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:09]: Oh, the agenda.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:42:10]: Super hyped. Exactly. Also, just by Lil Reone on, Friday. Wow.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:16]: Fantastic.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:42:17]: I take back my tweet about Edison's pizza. The Rianne is The the greatest pizza I've ever had in my life.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:24]: It it is my personal favorite here as well. Well, we're we're working our way towards towards the the hidden gems.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:42:30]: Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:32]: You know The thing about Yeah. The sneak peek sneak peek. You'll have to think of a different one. But, no, one of the things that we we do here is we're we're trying to paint a collective Collage, not necessarily of people's favorite things in Cleveland, but of things that other people may not know about. So this could be maybe the entirety of your agenda For your boss's boss coming in, but what are some of those things for you?

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:42:54]: So my family spends it's not Cleveland proper. I don't know if this is fair, but there's a small town Accounts. Lay. There's a small town called Fairport Harbor, which is just north of Pains. So so it's maybe like 30 minutes east of the city. Great public beach. My family owns an ice cream shop there now. It didn't have like an ice cream shop by The, like, 2 lighthouses right on the Stern, but I think that is a total hidden gem.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:43:19]: There's sailing lessons, you can rent paddle boards. It's beautiful. It's right around the corner from Headlands Beach. I love the vibe immediately when I go in town, I'm relaxed. So I think that's probably my top favorite in Cleveland proper. I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, Gordon Square, there's also this place called All Saints. The whole Gordon Square area, I think it's because it's so residential, There's a ton of really, really great stuff over there that I just haven't, explored yet, but awesome experience at El Reon and All Saints.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:53]: Yeah. We can oh, we'll plug El Rey on

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:43:55]: it, mostly. Yeah. I mean, like, okay, at the Cleveland Guardians stadium, The

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:01]: Oh, yes. The kid of the Guardians now.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:44:02]: Field. Yeah. The Guardians now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:03]: It's weird hearing that. I haven't heard that much yet.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:44:06]: Yeah. Look at me. Yeah, I love going to the game Land and the right field. There's this the the bar district. I think that's probably another one of my experiences that I like here. I'm in Lakewood. Is Lakewood even a home gym?

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:22]: Maybe. You know? It some people may not know about it.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:44:25]: Yeah. No. I think I

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:27]: you know, it depends of we're talking to people coming to Cleveland or

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:44:30]: living in Cleveland. Fairport's totally underrated. It feels like you've left Like, you're in some, like, beach town or whatever, and you are, I guess, but it's in Ohio. I love the vibe. It's so chill.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:41]: I I I do love that. That's why like, it's very easy to to have a transportation to another vibe very quickly from from anywhere including Mhmm. We'll add it, we'll add it to the list here. Well, Kate, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. I'm very excited that you get to go to Napa and celebrate and Didn't take that time, but, thank you for for coming on.

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:45:02]: Thank you for having me Land thanks for telling all the stories in Ohio.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:06]: It's been a fun a fun journey so far. If people have anything they wanna follow-up with you about, where is the the best place for them to reach you, Kate?

Kate Volzer (Wisr, Acquired by EAB) [00:45:15]: Probably message me on LinkedIn. Easiest. Or if they already have my email, they can email me or text me, call me, ever.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:32]: That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an Mail to Jeffrey at Lay of the land dot f m, or find us on Twitter at pod Lay of the land or at Sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Itunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.