Three Years After Shark Tank
Interview with Aidan Chopra, co-founder of Bitsbox, ex-Googler and author.
“We didn’t know that we were going to air on Shark Tank until January 2017, even though the video was taped in September of 2016. We were notified only three weeks ahead of our air date. Luckily, it was early in the year, and we already had a lot of inventory that we’d ordered for Christmas. We knew we weren’t going to get a 10x bump in business. So we didn’t over-order inventory, but we had some really good rules of thumb to follow. That day everything went really smoothly, thanks to Scott, Anastasia and Jeff, who made sure that we were ready.
Bitsbox has matured in many ways since then. Up to now we’ve raised $4 million over the last six years, and that’s comparatively not a lot. We’re just about to top $11 million in lifetime revenue, which is great. That’s a good ratio to be a small business that has raised a lot less than it actually earned. However, even us, we break even. This is not a profitable business at the moment. In fact, we break even when things are extremely favorable and when the team is small. For example, at the moment when people are staying at home and actively looking for educational materials for their kids, that’s when we break even. When there’s too many dollars flowing into online advertising channels like Facebook and Google, then the cost of advertising goes up too much and our CAC (or the cost of acquiring a customer) skyrockets.
We personally have decided that being a consumer oriented subscription box is not enough. We feel the obligation not only to try and grow, but also to fulfill the mission that we’ve set for ourselves. There are so many educators who really love our product, but they’re just using our consumer version. Another big reason for growing beyond a subscription model is that realistically, our boxes cost about $30/month, so we are mostly able to reach somewhat privileged kids. But we do want to be able to make a product that would reach kids from all over the country, no matter who they are. That’s why we decided we can make Bitsbox with an education-specific flavor, that’s easier for teachers to use in school. More importantly, this approach works from an impact point of view. Now we can get out to public schools and we can get out to a much wider range of kids who otherwise cannot afford to buy the Bitsbox for personal use.
First aspect was figuring out whether and how we can partner with someone who is already working with schools. Right now we are working with a company called STEMscopes. That worked really, really well. STEMscopes has been making a science curriculum for schools, but was looking for a partner in Computer Science. We were introduced by a mutual investor, and our collaboration turned out to be amazing. We launched about 3 months ago and we’re going to be reaching 10 times as many kids, as if we ever could have reached on our own.
Coding is one of the very few skills that allow you to jump many rungs on the socioeconomic ladder. If you can code it doesn’t matter what you look like, it doesn’t matter what you sound like, it doesn’t matter if you speak English very well. It doesn’t matter what your parents did for a living. If you’re good at coding, you can make a decent living and you can live wherever you want. That’s why, if we can get this skill into the hands of children, they could jump in one generation so quickly. The key is to get the opportunities in front of the children and encourage them to try it. We are just too small to do it ourselves, but hopefully with this new partnership we will have a wider reach.
However, I am not a programmer, I studied Arts and Architecture. My brother and I were both born in Montreal, but my dad is an immigrant from India. My mother is from Pittsburgh. Since childhood, I had a passion for designing buildings similar to my dad, who is an architect. However, I was also fascinated by the tools that make things in general. So right out of architecture school in 2004, I joined SketchUp, a 3D content creation tool. A couple of years later in 2006, we were acquired by Google. That was amazing. I was able to stay connected with architecture but also learn intricacies of software and startups. At that time I was also writing a newsletter for SketchUp, so shortly after the acquisition I was approached by people who manage “For Dummies” books about writing one about SketchUp.
When I came back to Google after spending months working on “SketchUp For Dummies”, I had to figure out what I was going to do. At that time, the system for ordering business cards was very simplified: you go directly to the vendor, and then you just pick the titles and manually input the information you want to be on your card. Back then Google had about 5000 employees, so there was no verification system. I didn’t have my old position, but at the time, the term “Product Evangelist” was just bubbling up. So that’s what I decided to put on my cards. When my order came, that was it. From then on, I was the product evangelist. That gave me permission to go around and lecture, teach, inspire and shine the spotlight on people. It was a lot of fun.
Google is also where I met my future co-founder Scott. He is one of the most talented developers I’ve ever worked with. But Scott is also a dad. So when we talked about starting Bitsbox, we realized that we both had the same attitude about work and life balance. Starting a company when you’re 38 or 39 is very different from starting it when you’re 28 or 22. You just realize that you have to have balance for your family. You can’t sleep under your desk and work 22 hours a day. So we discussed it and thought: what if we could do a startup where we work reasonable hours, and we just accept the fact that we’re going to grow more slowly, but we still work very hard.
All I could remember from my childhood is that my dad worked all the time: 12 hours a day, every single day. Even though he is 77 now, he still works seven days a week. So he brought this typical Indian work ethic to North America when he moved here. I didn’t really get to know my dad very well until I was really in high school when I could go to work with him. For me, the idea of being self employed, owning business, actually having a family and having time to spend with your family seemed impossible. I didn’t think that it was possible to do both things at the same time. I really didn’t. He had done what he had to do and like him I also have two boys now. But I just wanted to make sure to be able to spend more time with them. So because I had Scott as a co-founder, I was able to see a world where I could have a startup and have a family and time for my family. It has been an incredible journey so far.
If we look back, 500 years ago only scribes and monks knew how to read and write. At some point they had this question of how we should teach everybody to read and write. Some people, perhaps, said “That’s nonsense. Why would everyone need to read and write? These people don’t need to learn how to read.” But somebody stepped up and said: “No, no, wait, we need to figure out a way to teach everybody to read because reading is very important.” And writing is even more important. Yet how do you get to 100% literacy with a skill that’s very hard? Learning to read and write is hard. It takes years. But that’s the analog to what we’re trying to do now with coding.
Some of us believe that there is a future where everyone knows how to code at least at a basic level. Yet how do we get from the current state to realizing that future? It’s going to take some people making robots and Code.org trying to figure out how to do it visually. It’s going to take us, Bitsbox, writing a little API on JavaScript. At some point 100 years from now, we’ll understand the best way to get this into people’s brains, but right now it is exciting for me to be part of this.”
Big Stories Small Businesses interviews small and local businesses. Follow us to read more stories of different founders.
Facebook: Big Stories Small Businesses
Instagram: @bigstoriessmallbusinesses
