Kurt Bodenstedt is a charismatic and innovative research scientist in the pursuit of knowledge to advance the fields of science and education. Kurt has received his Masters degree from the University of North Texas in 2016, while working on materials to be used in the development of solar cells. Kurt is currently in pursuit of his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry working on organic light emitting diode materials for device to make them cost effective and more efficient.
As a co-founder of PDAFL LLC, Kurt engages the 8 years of teaching experience as a teaching and research assistant towards the development of educational products to help in the success of future STEM students in higher education. Finding ways to make the product affordable to the users at a fraction of what they pay for their coursework themselves is a key ideal for Kurt since he has had to bootstrap his higher education experience along with this company. Having the ability to receive a quality education regardless of background and financial situation is another driving force for Kurt and the company.
While not working, Kurt enjoys listening to a wide range of musical genres, attending rock and metal concerts, playing tabletop games with friends and family, and crafting new drink concoctions for friends and family. Having attained the rank of Eagle Scout in 2004, Kurt keeps with the tradition of volunteer work and giving back to the community and volunteers with the Texas Veterans Hall of Fame organization.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is PDAFL all about?
PDAFL is a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) platform that assists its users in learning their topic of choice, through an interactive medium, designed to stimulate the user while aiding and retaining the content on the road to subject mastery. There is a growing method of hybridized learning that has been seen in the recent few years, headed away from the “pen and paper” lectures that were given to students by a professor in a classroom environment. The current learning environment is one that is online in a place that you are comfortable in, but may not necessarily be the place for productivity and focused learning. Hybridized learning took away the “structure” of a classroom along with the social interactions that the students had when they were face to face with one another, and have been confined to Zoom lectures or break out rooms in order to receive the knowledge they have signed on for.
The lack of invigorating and interactive nature of lectures have devolved into as technology in a classroom setting overcomes the “traditional” methods, leads many students to be either withdrawn or lose interest in the topic. PDAFL’s product line, stimulates the 3 styles of learning, whether it is audio, tactile, or visual based learning, engaging the user in a method that they are familiar with while taking the educational experience into the third dimension and off of the page with its interactive options. Currently, our courses focus on Organic Chemistry, which is a prerequisite for many higher education programs including medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, veterinarian, nursing and physical therapy. For PDAFL, Everywhere Learning Matters, is more than our slogan, we want our products to be available to all students and institutions at an affordable price to ensure that the cost of learning doesn’t outpace the cost of living for its users regardless of background or economic status.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
My business partner and co-founder Dr. Dave Jenkins were both graduate students at the time that plans to form our company were put into motion. We decided to go out for some food and drinks, after teaching our weekly courses and started to talk shop on the topic of education. Both of us had received our undergraduate or Masters education in institutions outside of the state of Texas, and we reflected on the requirements needed to get into chemistry classes and the rigor by which the topics were taught at our Alma Maters. In our current positions, we compared the teaching styles and preparation, that the incoming class of undergraduates were displaying to us as students, compared to our own experiences at that age. We noticed that what we considered “the basics” of the coursework needed to get though the class, were not being grasped by the incoming class due to either a fundamental misunderstanding and/or misapplication of a formula or theory due to lack of mathematics or practice on the topic from previous institutions. After notes were compared between us, the results were disheartening.
Dave and I tossed around the idea that help needed to be given to balance out the education differences seen by students coming from many different educational backgrounds. A method to help “standardize” or level the playing field so to speak on many key classes in the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field were needed. We debated over differing teaching styles that worked and what didn’t for us, and we decided to create an education-based company that would be able to give those students who wished to get ahead or an added boost to their knowledge while in class a tool to help them understand the topic, pass the class, and eventually graduate and move on with their lives.
A key question loomed in our minds, which class do we start with? We did research into the top classes that students had trouble with in the STEM field and saw that many of the feeder chemistry courses, General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry, made many switch out of the STEM field once they failed them. Looking for resources on those topics, in books, study guides, applications and games, many people produced products geared toward general chemistry. There was a decidedly lack of study material that was interactive and engaging for Organic Chemistry. Organic Chemistry is the one “gateway” or attrition course that proves an undergraduate has what it takes to pursue a career in the STEM, medical, dental, and veterinary fields.
Having selected our topic of choice we had two other daunting questions to answer, how are we going to make the content and how to fund the content. The answer to both the questions were the same, bootstrap and make it ourselves. Many collaborative projects in academia of this magnitude and breadth, die for one of two main reasons, there is a disconnect between the programmer and the subject matter expert in how to create the project, and the funding runs out and isn’t renewed. We as the subject matter experts, had to figure out how to program and compile all of the knowledge that we possessed into a digital medium at a fraction of the cost due to our limited budget. Having bootstrapped our own higher education careers, we understood the financial burden that our consumers take upon themselves to attain their degree, and we pass on the savings to the consumer in our pricing, having done all the work in-house. Having an affordable product line was one of the goals we wished to achieve so that everyone regardless of education level or financial background has the same chance to succeed.
In the execution of our first product line, we wondered what functionality would capture the student’s interest and inspire them to learn the topic. The topic of “gamification” has been a buzzword in the academic community, and even more so now that remote learning has changed the landscape of learning. Gamification, is the ability to have a game-like atmosphere that doesn’t detract from the learning lesson that a product is delivering. Our flagship product is one of hopefully many products, that will expand gamification into a field and reinvigorate a student’s desire to learn in their remote locations.
What are your plans, how do you plan to grow this company?
Our first goal is to sustain our company’s current bottom line. Minimize cost and streamline production via subscription services. Streamlining production of eLearning material using available comprehensive technologies from Camtasia software to Unity productions to give a sense of virtual community and comradery that has been lacking in remote learning. We are investing into marketing approaches that will optimize our SEO and social media presence. For example, Google AdWords, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Twitter posts, and LinkedIn networks will be used to debut our new product lines.
Our blog page will be used to discuss relevant topics in STEM fields, product reviews, and upcoming releases to inform our customer base. PDAFL is also continuing to develop YouTube content to further expand our multimedia options. Interactive and stimulating educational products are in demand, users and educators are looking for tools to assist with remote learning that will engage and assess their students. Learning is a continually evolving process by which individuals engage and confront complex lessons by adapting to a given problem and providing real world solutions. Essentially, we will expand our products and services to help aid educators and students transitioning to the hybrid learning environment that has evolved in our education system due to the COVID 19 pandemic.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?
PDAFL’s biggest problem to date is brand recognition in the education community. Our product is an immersive educational experience that hasn’t been seen in the application and education markets to date, and in the education field novelty does not equate to product trust and acceptance. In order to overcome this brand recognition hurdle, we are in the NSF grant writing process to give several universities trial runs of our product to assess the viability in a classroom setting on acceptance of the grant. We have launched a new marketing campaign on our social media and YouTube channels to have more recognition by students and users in the new academic 2021 year.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
Project scope creep and project completion projections were some of our first mistakes we faced when setting up our online flagship product. Project scope creep is the need to modify our product line with additional functionalities that we continuously find over time to help accentuate our products versatility and viability when compared with our competition. What we learned from this, is the need to have a product out in the market to generate buzz and revenue, which can be further modified through updates. While we didn’t have a product out, the feedback and funds needed to advance our end goal for the product were stuck in the development phase and our bootstrapped funds were declining. Having our flagship product out on the market allows our user base to critique our work and advance our customization options going forward to tailor our product to the user’s needs.
Project completion projections were initially set at unrealistic dates of completion early in our development stages as we were investigating and learning how to build the backbone of our flagship product. We initially set out having 4 main products out, and realized once we sought guidance from business mentors, that we were spreading our business too thin. We had to focus on a single product that we were confident in the creation of that would build our business brand around. Once we have success with our flagship product, we will revisit the expansion of our product line to include further topics.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
The main ways that we separate ourselves from our competition is threefold. First is how we ask our questions and the users response. Our emphasis in organic chemistry is synthesis driven. Understanding the fundamentals behind synthetic pathways is a key element of the course and one that students always want more practice with. Instead of multiple choice for our synthesis questions, we have programed into a 3D molecular modeling program our synthetic answers, which makes the user correctly draw out the desired product rather than guessing the correct answer without employing fundamental concepts.
Second, is the user feedback given from our questions and interactive activities. Our product allows the user to view intermediates within a synthetic process (the ability to go from A to B to C and view all the answers in between) and have the ability to see the right answer to know if they’re on the right track to obtain the correct response.
Third is our expanded interactive product line which incorporates a 3D modeling program to build molecules, engaging music, games (memory games, drag and drops, platformer, and reagent games), interactive comics, augmented reality (AR), customized videos, animated videos, Synthesis Seeker and the famed Fall Of The Reagents.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
The first course is a webinar by SCORE. This webinar displays options on how to start your business, whether online or brick and mortar, with suggestions on what order to accomplish certain business milestones for reduced costs.
Another key course webinar that is provided by SCORE is SWOT analysis. SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat) analysis is crucial to the startup mentality of a new entrepreneur. This analysis method will help you identify the pros and cons in a business, through their planning and execution methods, competition analysis, and product marketing ideas to give peace of mind to your monetary investment.
The third course by SCORE that I would suggest is on sales funneling. This course goes over how to model your brand of business, and gives ideas on how to shape your marketing/website to prove to your customers that you are an authority in your field and to attract them into purchasing your product. These courses tie together the framework of what an entrepreneur needs to consider when starting a business from concept of the idea, to analysis of production and where they fit in their sales market, to finally marketing the product and receiving income.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Our most effective marketing strategy to date has been a combination of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of our company website and Google AdWords. That combination linked with our social media platforms and YouTube presence has given the bulk of the company’s revenue to date.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
There are a few areas that I would suggest spending the start up funds in. First is securing the name of your company in the form of an LLC or other business entity recognized in your state. Next open all of the necessary banking accounts needed for operations. After that obtain business paperwork programs, such as Business in a Box, for help creating all of the business forms needed to procure services. Following that, secure an email domain for your company as well as a website domain. Any funds remaining at that point should be invested in ecommerce capabilities for your website to take payment for services rendered and look into marketing tools to help expand company branding.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Always be on the lookout for free or low-cost resources that can help optimize or maintain your current business goals. Look for opportunities to have your business plans analyzed and professionally critiqued, such as a business plan competition. Look at the local resources from your Small Business Data Center (SBDC) and SCORE mentors to help advance your business goals and their ease of attainment.
How can we get in touch with you?
You can visit my company website PDAFL LLC, find me on social media via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
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