Bootstrapping an EdTech Venture to $6M, Ready to Scale with AI: Daniel Santos, CEO of Prepory (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Okay. Let’s go back to this point where you have three high schools that you’re working with to validate your business model. How much were they willing to pay you?

Daniel Santos: Our high school contracts at the time ranged from about $25,000 to $30,000 that first year. We bootstrapped and did about $100K in revenue. We were really excited.

Sramana Mitra: From three high schools?

Daniel Santos: From three high schools and a handful of families.

Sramana Mitra: And that’s annual revenue?

Daniel Santos: Yes, and they would repeat as they kept going.

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the delivery model. When you say a high school is paying you $25,000–$40,000 to access your services, how do you deliver this functionality to your constituency?

Daniel Santos: Things have changed since then, but at the time, we built out an entire college admissions curriculum focused on small group workshops and group-level support for students. From ninth through twelfth grade, we covered a series of core topics students needed to successfully navigate the college admissions process.

We hosted a Freshman Foundations workshop that gave ninth graders an understanding of their GPA, how they would be evaluated by admissions officers, etc. At those types of schools, you probably didn’t hear about college until the end of 11th grade. By then, your profile was already built, and your college options were limited if you hadn’t made the right decisions early on.

As students progressed through high school, our curriculum adapted. In 10th grade, we hosted a “Find Your Fit” workshop to help students explore schools outside Florida. Leaving the state for college was rare in those communities, and we wanted to change that narrative by showing them broader opportunities.

In 11th grade, we worked on resumes, college essays, supplemental essays, and application strategy.

Sramana Mitra: So, it sounds like a human-heavy service. Did you have a large team to deliver this?

Daniel Santos: At that time, we didn’t have a large team. It was primarily delivered by myself and one other person. We were bootstrapped and very small then.

Sramana Mitra: This is 2015?

Daniel Santos: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What happens in 2016? You have $100K in revenue, you’ve penetrated three high schools and delivered services to students. What’s next?

Daniel Santos: We continued to grow our school partnerships in South Florida. By the end of the 2016–2017 school year, we were working with about seven schools. Our team grew, and we also started working with more one-on-one clients.

The schools we worked with also started to shift—we took on a few private schools. Through them, we had access to families with more disposable income, which allowed us to enroll students in our one-on-one programs outside of school partnerships. That helped us expand our individual client base.

Sramana Mitra: And what was the pricing model for those one-on-one clients?

Daniel Santos: It has changed since then, but back in 2016–2017, it was around $2,000 to $3,000 per student per year.

Sramana Mitra: In 2016, what was the distribution between school clients and private clients?

Daniel Santos: It was still primarily schools. One significant change came in 2017 when, through our school partners, we got connected with a client looking to develop an e-course for college admissions. They wanted to productize the process for their entire student body.

Sramana Mitra: Until this point, you were doing in-person workshops at schools. You weren’t doing online?

Daniel Santos: For individual families, we were supporting them online. We had a small team of part-time employees who did the online support, supervised by myself and other core team members. But the school-facing services were still in-person.

Sramana Mitra: So it was a very physical, in-person model. This wasn’t a tech business at this point.

Daniel Santos: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: So then what happens?

Daniel Santos: We’re still primarily a B2C professional services business. We’ve launched AI products, but our core business is still professional services.

Sramana Mitra: But now it’s all online?

Daniel Santos: Yes, 100% online.

Sramana Mitra: It’s not scalable to keep going to schools in person.

Daniel Santos: Absolutely not.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Bootstrapping an EdTech Venture to $6M, Ready to Scale with AI: Daniel Santos, CEO of Prepory
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