Kristen Buchanan is the CEO and Founder of Edify, a software company that helps software engineering managers build technical onboarding plans for their new hires. Kristen’s work links adult learning science with the resources engineers need to be successful. She is passionate about developing the future of high-performing engineering organizations so that engineering teams can build better products faster.
Kristen started her first company in 2014, a learning & development consulting firm that architected and delivered onboarding programs for companies such as AWS Elemental, Puppet, OpenSky Alibaba, Cirium (FlightGlobal), Cloudability, and more. There, she developed a method and technique she calls the “learning touchpoint matrix,” which organizes information and learning content for new hires in engineering.
Kristen Buchanan holds a BA in Museum Studies and Art History from Meredith College, concentrating on adult learning. She has spoken at O’Reilly OSCON, DevOps Days, among other conferences.
What is Edify all about?
Edify is an AI platform that helps engineering managers quickly build and deploy technical onboarding programs for their new engineers. We’re all about removing friction from an engineering team’s daily life so that they can build the best products possible!
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I was a small business owner before I started Edify, and in that consulting firm, I specialized in supporting growing technology companies with engineering onboarding. My background is really in museum education and adult learning, which, strangely enough, was very handy for supporting adult learners in tech companies.
After several years of watching my customers and seeing what they needed for engineering onboarding, I decided to start sketching out (literally!) ideas for software to make their lives easier. After getting some good initial traction on the idea, I started to build the product with our now-Director of Product, Jayme Rabenberg, in early 2020. We did a great deal of customer discovery – over 100 interviews and a significant design sprint – to come to our beta launch in less than 4 months. I then raised our $2M seed round of funding with investors such as Flying Fish, Atlassian Ventures, Rogue Ventures, and Portland Seed Fund, along with several angels. We’re also now in the 2021 cohort of Techstars Seattle.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?
I think that’s yet to come, honestly! There are new challenges every day, but so far, we have hurtled over each challenge. The first big challenge was managing two miss-hires in 2020. I made some ill-advised hiring choices, even with a decent interview process for one of the roles. Those choices had hard consequences for our team at a fragile time in our history, and it took a lot of effort to overcome. That mostly came down to honest conversations, compassion, and fortitude.
What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
I read and listen! I try to read news about my industry, and I try to listen to my team, mentors, and customers every day. If you are always learning and listening, then you’ll do things well most of the time.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
Ahhh – a good question, but I think that if people knew how hard things would sometimes be, they might not start the venture in the first place! However, I suppose I wish I knew more about customer acquisition models for technical and developer-centered businesses. I’m learning all that now!
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new startup, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would spend it on trying to get as many customer discovery interviews as possible, then on a contractor to build wireframes for the idea. Once validated, I would start pre-selling that product to get more money to build the real thing!
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Go out and try it, and try to sell it. I always tell people not to give up until they have tried to sell something many times and failed. And even then, just keep tweaking the concept. Listen to your customers, and if they want to buy it, you can build a business.
Notion, Loom, and Grain – we use Notion to manage information inside our company, Loom to communicate with each other and external folks via video and screen recordings, and Grain to make customer discovery and communicate more clearly with each other (it has awesome transcriptions). You’ll notice these are all internal tools – if we are functioning well internally, we are growing externally too!
How is running a tech company different than what you thought it would be?
Everything is always, always changing. I could change anything I wanted to at any point in my previous business, but it works the other way around now. Now, I learn new things from my customers, advisors, investors, and competitors every day, and it instantly changes how we need to work as a business (or at least it can). I personally love this kind of change, but I didn’t exactly expect it!
How can readers get in touch with you?
Email me at Kristen@getedify.co or check out www.getedify.co for more information.
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