Today's guest on The EdTech Startup Show is Lauren Dachille, CEO of Nimble.

Lauren started her career as a member of the Human Capital Team at D.C. Public Schools, where she focused on teacher recruitment and selection. She spent several years working on teacher quality policy across 18 states through the nonprofit StudentsFirst. Lauren founded Nimble in 2016 to help school districts identify and hire high-performing teachers. She received her B.S. in Human Development and Education from Cornell University and her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Nimble is the next generation of K-12 recruitment and hiring software. Our product is an applicant tracking system that leverages AI to save districts time and help them identify and hire the best fit teachers for their classrooms. Founded in 2016, Nimble now serves clients nationwide ranging from small charter school networks to some of the largest urban districts in the country. For more information, visit us at www.hirenimble.com.

Links for Nimble:

www.hirenimble.com

LinkedIn: @hirenimble / @LaurenDachille

Twitter: @Nimblek12 / @LaurenDachille

Questions Lauren Dachille Answers

Can you tell me about what your company does in your own words? And what your role is there?

How did your experience in DC schools lead to your work at Nimble?

“Predictive technology” is a phrase used often now, but folks don’t always know if it actually means anything. How does Nimble try to predict what teacher candidates will succeed?

To follow-up on that, Can you tell me about some of the interesting insights that have been uncovered after looking at the data around teacher hiring? Any surprising correlations or trends?

Your company recently published a blog post called “Demo Lessons at Scale in a Virtual Environment.” How are schools handling the hiring process right now? How are you supporting them?

I’ve spoken to lots of folks at companies who use a bottom-up approach of getting teacher users then moving onto school and district accounts. Your company is by necessity a district-level sale. What’s your approach for that? What would you tell someone new to sales or marketing at a startup who was taking a similar approach?

In your interview on Education Next, you said:

“One of the reasons districts aren’t sold yet on the benefits of novel approaches and user-friendly tools is because there are too few companies and founders willing to inject a bit of healthy competition into this space. Products should have to be outstanding to get districts to use them, but unfortunately, there are too many complacent incumbent companies and products out there today.”

What are some lessons you’ve learned about competing against incumbents?

What’s a final message or call to action you’d like to leave listeners with?

Want to hear other interviews with entrepreneurs who moved from education to the business of EdTech?

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