Staying small
Here's a list of different EdTech companies and how many people work there (note - these statistics were found online and may not be 100% accurate):
Quizizz: 20+
Pear Deck: 50+
Seesaw: 80+
Kahoot: 100+
Remind: 100+
Quizlet: 150+
Nearpod: 200+
Newsela: 400+
And how many people work at Gimkit?
Three.
Yep, just three. And that includes myself.
Lots of founders want to "make it big" — having tons of employees and operating at this massive scale.
That's something I used to care about. When I first launched Gimkit, I wanted to share it with everyone. I wanted to grow it like crazy, get as many people as I could using it, and expand it as far as I could. The question I never asked myself was why?
Why do I want to grow like crazy? Why do I want as many people as I can using it? Why do I want to expand?
It turns out...it was ego.
Society had taught me that success in product development looked like major adoption. Millions and millions of users. Global impact. Game changing. Noteworthy.
I wanted that.
But I didn't end up chasing it. Instead, I got some incredible mentorship.
While I wanted to spread Gimkit and get it used by more and more people, Jeff slowed me down. Jeff showed me the importance and walked me through the process of getting feedback from students & educators, taking it, and using it to create something better.
I'm glad I listened to Jeff. With his mentorship, instead of trying to get more people to use Gimkit, I just worked on Gimkit.
And listening to feedback, learning more, improving, and trying new things is what has made Gimkit so effective.
Trying to get more people to use Gimkit would not have made it more effective.
I'm incredibly proud that we're just three people.
And we're not three people working 80 hour weeks — we're three people working 40 hour weeks. Three people that work, but that also have plenty of time for things outside of work.
For the amount of usage Gimkit gets, people are usually surprised when they hear it's just the three of us. It's common at this stage for there to usually be around ten people.
But we don't need to be.
We don't need to risk giving up what we have right now: a sustainable and profitable business where we love our work and people love what we make. We don't need to risk that to "make it big".
There may be a ten person version of Gimkit in the future, or maybe a twenty person, maybe a hundred person — who knows?
It's more important to us to just be the right size — that's it.
Right now that size is three, maybe four.
And that's all we need.