If Apseed was a child, she would be in Kindergarten today. Five years ago, on May 26th, ApSeed was introducing sixty (60) Seedlings to the Wiley Lash and Fleming Head Start locations. The 2016 Seedling was an Amazon Kindle with a rinky-dink protective cover and an unsolvable 45-day kill switch buried deep in its money-making code. We fired Amazon and built our own.
Today, Erik Lipscomb showed us this picture of our first client. She is probably in the fifth grade and, hopefully, thriving in all aspects of school.
Five years ago, we set a goal of distributing 6,000 Seedlings by 2021. We wanted to “saturate” Rowan County by finding ALL qualified children and helping them become Kindergarten-ready. Today, we are awaiting our next 2,500 Seedlings, which take us close to 15,000 units. These Seedlings are helping children learn their shapes, colors, letters, and numbers in North and South Carolina and New York City.
Gosh, comparing today to five years ago is like experiencing Moore’s Law in real time. Our speed and capabilities have doubled every 18-24 months. Exponential growth! For example, the Seedling assembly time originally took nine MINUTES and now takes eighty SECONDS.
We have significantly increased our personal visits to our “hubs”. Originally, we would preach and practice the principle of “eyes on, hands off”. Today, we are in road trip mode every week. Again, exponentially more visits. The results are rewarding. Greater engagement, teaching moments, sharing testimonials, and encouraging more research results. Now we are “eyes and hands ON”.
Okay, let’s set goals for five years from now:
Seedlings distributed 45,000
Kindergarten-ready 90%
Low SES 3rd Grade reading pass rate 50%
Public, recurring funding Yes
Where were you in May, 2021? More importantly, where will we ALL be in 2026? Hopefully, looking at our goals and asking, “Why so low?”.
