NZ Business Podcast - Paul Spain
00:05:18 · Jamie Beaton
[00:05:18] S0: your Totally. Totally. So from a young age, my mom was, you know, really focused on supporting me educationally, so she made a lot of sacrifices to get me to things like tutoring. So I have this funny memory of being about six years old going out to botany, to a tuition center with about 200 Chinese students and me, and I just thought this was normal. Know? Saturdays, I would do my math and English tutoring. I used to do phonics down in Penrose when I was about three, I think. I went through Numberworks, which is now a Crimson company, which is quite cool. Basically, I really enjoyed education. It became something that I was really passionate about. And I have these very distinct memories up to the age of about 11 or 12, where I'd be sitting in like a Wendy's in Oderhoo or something. My mom would be testing me on history or social studies, and she would know the content, you know, probably better than I did. So we were real team going through school, and she really helped foster that real love of learning within me. Then I think around those years, near the end of Saint Kitts prep, I became pretty motivated to do well at school, I guess, you know, really intrinsically. And then coming into high school, you know, I was kind of all guns blazing, shooting to really do well at school, both because I loved my subjects and I really saw it as a really important path forwards to these top universities. A key switching point for me was when I was about 14. Up until that point, you know, my mom and I's goal was really to stay within New Zealand and probably do medicine locally. That was, you know, something if you're good at science, it's a pretty respectable path. But I didn't really have a deep reason for why I wanted to do that. And I sat on a train from Glen And Us to Kings, next to this guy called Ben Kornfeld, who was the ducks of Kings. He was year 13, and he was an American citizen who'd just gotten into Yale. And he told me that I should consider looking overseas. That really shifted my horizon because I really respected him a lot. And I thought about, okay, what would it take to get into these schools I hear about in movies, like Harvard and Yale and stuff? So I spent the next four years, you know, going pretty hard down that process.
00:06:59 · Jamie Beaton, Paul Spain
That led me to take about 10 a levels where most students do three or four, create a lot of different clubs, do different extracurriculars, and, you know, ultimately apply to a wide range of schools in The US, UK, Middle East, Singapore. And then after getting into all of those schools, you know, really had lots of families reaching out to me about my own education experience, and that was really, part of the genesis of Crimson. [00:07:18] S1: How were people finding out that you were doing that? Did you get some media coverage? Was it... You know, how was Yeah. How was it that that you were attracting attention at that point?
00:07:27 · Jamie Beaton
[00:07:27] S0: So I guess going through Kings, know, Kings is a very supportive community, a celebrated achievement. So, you know, know, I would often go into prize giving, winning awards for ducks or different subjects, etcetera, going up in assembly. So lots of the community knew me pretty well, and I was a prefect in the school and really involved with lots of younger students in things like debating and various sports like hockey and tennis. So I came back and I did the leavers speech just after year 13 had ended, and I'd gotten into Harvard and Cambridge at that point. And so they got me to do a kind of a keynote speech to the students about my journey through Kings. And so lots of students, I think, were quite inspired by that because they saw that, you know, this didn't happen that accidentally. Like, was quite intentional from age 15 onwards about this goal. I guess I was kinda constantly pushing the limits in Kings around what subjects I could take, you know, creating new clubs, things like this. And so, initially, it was a lot of just students who knew of me through the community. So I was doing things like tutoring and giving some advice. And then I went to actually an internship following high school at the Ice House, which is, you know, the accelerator here locally. And I saw these entrepreneurs, you know, creating their different companies, raising capital. And I thought, you know, we're making great traction doing this, and it's all happening organically. Maybe we can kinda supercharge this. So that that was really how it unfolded. So I remember our first event. I think I had about $40 in my bank account at this point, and then I think I got some funding from University of Auckland, on the scholarship, and I created our first event on the Crowne Plaza in in Auckland CBD. We invited along a lot of students that had just gotten into overseas schools. We had about 200 parents come along, and that was the first kind of Crimson kickoff event. And that really created a wave of our first initial students coming along to our services and then really got the ball rolling.
00:09:00 · Paul Spain, Jamie Beaton
[00:09:00] S1: So as you develop the idea for for Crimson initially, what was... What did that first idea look like in terms of exactly what you're selling? Yep. What were you charging? What did that actual... That that, you know, version one or whatever you wanna call it, beta version of the business kinda [00:09:20] S0: Look like. [00:09:20] S1: Look like. Yeah. What was that picture?
00:09:22 · Jamie Beaton
[00:09:22] S0: Yeah. So I guess to answer this question for a second, think about what high school career guidance looks like. So, typically, you think about a career guidance counselor who often will know a lot about New Zealand universities, maybe a little bit about Australian universities. Typically, they're gonna recommend the universities that are, you know, most local. So if you're in Auckland, maybe Auckland University, for example. And for one of these guidance counsellors, you know, these foreign universities are quite the unknown. And so, you know, generally, they're not gonna recommend these options because it's a bit out of their comfort zone. Yet for the students that have the potential to get into these schools, this represents a truly transformative opportunity for them in their careers if they can actually get in. So I saw, first of all, this kind of opportunity wedge where there were many kids that had the talent to get in but were not applying because they didn't know, a, they could, b, how to, etcetera, and they didn't have role models that had done that. So that was sort of the observation I had. I saw other kids in my own year group at King's and other schools like Westlake, McLean's College, etcetera, that were, you know, really strong academically, but ultimately weren't successful getting into these schools because they they didn't have the right kind of profile and strategy, applying. That was my observation. I also had my cofounder, Shandre. We met on a trip to, Europe called The Hague International Model UN. Actually, we met before that at Model UN, but that was a trip we really got to know each other well. And on that trip, I was really impressed by her. She was the head girl of un... Of Albany senior. She was UNICEF youth ambassador, and she was just very charismatic and care for vulnerable communities. And she would have been an amazing candidate for US universities, but she'd never been told about it. And so she found herself in the first year of Auckland University doing health science, and she really wasn't liking it that much. You know, she enjoyed it a little bit, but, you know, she really could have been in a different environment. And, you know, her experience, with my experience together, we realized this is a real pain point. Lots of Kiwis could be going down this quite unique pathway.
00:11:05 · Jamie Beaton
And so as far as what the offering was, I looked for inspiration as to kind of what my high school had been like. So my last year in high school, I had tutors in seven different subjects, you know, math, English, biology, chemistry, physics, French, I think the SAT as well. And I was actually usually at the top of a lot of these subjects, but I used tutoring to get through a hundred and forty hours or so of content for, say, further maths in thirty, forty hours because I had so little time that I had to be hyper efficient with my learning. And I found that a traditional school classroom of 20, 30 kids really wasn't that effective for me, because I'd covered a lot of the content kinda before. So when we launched Crimson, the idea was to take students and give them a clear game plan as to what they could do to build their profile for these schools, which would often involve, you know, a strategist, which would often be me in the early days, helping them make a plan for what activities to do when, what subjects to do, then finding them this kind of network of tutors around them to make that happen. And initially, that was all done, you know, with kind of off the shelf tech like Skype, things like this, And that was kind of how we got rolling. So I recruited the three other kids that got into Harvard that year from New Zealand. Many of my classmates across New Zealand that I did debating with things like this. And then, when I got to Harvard, I just began... I recruited all my roommates, you know, all my friends from freshman year, etcetera, and that became the initial, you know, sale of tutors that, you know, began delivering for our Crimson kids back here in New Zealand. So that was kinda how the offering evolved. As far as the price point, you know, there was reasonable market standards for what tutoring prices were. College counseling was a novel concept within New Zealand. And so I guess we thought about, you know, what our cost basis was, and then also, you know, what kind of value we were bringing to people. And I think about, for example, you know, an example, like, of our students, Lucas Lee. He was at Maclean's College. I think he, you know, he bought a Crimson program. He he probably would have gone to, like, a big four or something within, you know, New Zealand, probably on a salary of $50.60 k NZD, came through Crimson, gone to Harvard.