Wright: Welcome to the Princeton Spark. My name is Wright Seneres. This season of the Princeton Spark podcast is focused on the story of Adora, a uniquely Princeton startup that found opportunity even in a global health crisis, and achieved a dream exit. This team of student entrepreneurs built a company that disrupted the college tour industry and enabled more lower-income prospective students to access more colleges across the nation. With support from the Princeton entrepreneurial ecosystem, the Adora team launched, pivoted in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, scored some early successes, and then were acquired by a terrific company. We’ll meet some of those key people who helped them along the way, and explore some of the lessons that any entrepreneur can take from their experience. So if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the Princeton Spark in your podcast listening app of choice, so you don’t miss the rest of this fascinating story of Princeton student entrepreneurship. (Princeton Spark theme music) (Science Fiction Electronic Computer Processing sound) Wright: From the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council, this is the Princeton Spark. I’m Wright Seneres. The various people that make up the Princeton entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem have long been at work, taking risks to bring transformational ideas and companies to the world, in the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity. These are the stories of Entrepreneurship the Princeton Way. At PEC, we support Princeton-connected startups and help to build the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem in New Jersey and beyond. In the previous episodes, we introduced you to the three co-founders of Adora, an app that reshaped virtual college tours to be more accessible and personalized. It all started when Ron, one of the co-founders, had lunch with a friend from his high school, after this friend took a tour of the Princeton campus. Ron Miasnik: I asked him how he enjoyed the visit, his Princeton visit. And he looked at me without flinching and said, honestly, it sucked. Wright: That friend didn’t hear what he was looking for during the tour. That gave Ron the spark to work on this problem, to bring in Raya Ward and Joseph Rubin on the founding team, and to seek guidance from experienced entrepreneurs in the Princeton ecosystem. This included Ann Kirschner, a former Princeton Trustee who had advised Adora from the start. Ann Kirschner: Ann Kirschner. I'm a university professor at the City University of New York. And then I sit on a number of, of corporate boards, and not for profit, mostly focused on education, tech and media. One of my fellow trustees mentioned that her sister who was currently enrolled at Princeton, was putting together a Princeton Tiger trek to go to Israel. And would I be interested in talking to the group that was putting together the trip and helping them to connect with people to meet while they were in Israel? And I said, Sure. And, and that's how I met Daniela Cohen. And Ron, we asked Nick, and, and in the course of meeting with them, Ron began telling me about his startup about Adora. And ron’s, ron’s a pretty irresistible die of forces of nature. And, and I found myself really intrigued by the idea and impressed with Ron personally and, and, and with his partners. One of them Raya was on the, on the trip, as well. So that's how that's how I first heard about Adora. Wright: Ann has been an invaluable advisor to Adora. This is what Raya and Joseph from Adora had to say about her. Raya Ward: I remember she turned us on to a lot of journalists and people writing about the future of higher education. So she got us kind of like okay, no one knows what's happening. I'm figuring it out. But here people need to be listening to and she kind of got us in the in that conversation of not just how are we adapting now but what is I think at that point where we were just like responding to an issue that we had witnessed and that we understood, but with her help and what the sources that we started like listening to start to say okay, actually what's happening is like higher ed could be changing and what what what do we have the future of hired to be and how can we use this turbulence this scary moment to possibly put the solution something under solves what we already know. But what you know, like thinking more future I guess focused. So I think she's really helpful in that way of like, you guys are just solving a problem you're possibly causing a transformation. Joseph Rubin: There were a lot of conversations that we had with and with our advisors in general, that forced us to just reconsider. And there are a lot of times where we ended up coming off of a call, and just all talking to each other, and realizing like, wow, we really sort of missed the forest for the trees here, there's a whole bigger picture. Wright: The picture was about to get even bigger. Technology has always been transforming experiences throughout the educational landscape. And while the team was already doing well with the advice of edtech experts like Ann Kirschner, they were about to endure another profound transformation with Covid-19. Ann Kirschner: It's funny that COVID But, you know, the reality is that Adora was in in a great place, before we were forced to go virtual. And then once we went virtual, they were already in place to take full advantage and to serve students in a way that now it was it was no longer optional. It was gonna be required. Wright: How exactly did the Adora team respond to the situation created by the pandemic? That’s after the break. Wright: The Princeton Entrepreneurship Council invites you to check out our website, entrepreneurs.princeton.edu. There you can find out more about our programs and events for entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurially-minded in the Princeton ecosystem and beyond. Sign up for our newsletter and you’ll stay up to date on PEC news and events. Wright: Welcome back to the Princeton Spark. Adora had to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic quickly, but the product Adora had been building…it wasn’t quite what they needed. Ron: So in the backstory is that actually Adora initially was an on campus tour solution. Right, our whole idea was to enhance the on campus tour experience. That's part of the reason we worked so much with orange key. And actually our initial reaction when we realized that, that COVID was happening, of course, none of us have grasped how long this would be and how big How big of an impact it was, my initial reaction was, oh, okay, on campus tours aren't happening for a while, let's delay our launch by a couple months, because of course, everything's gonna pass in, you know, in a few months, and then everything's going to go back to normal. Wright: As we all know, it did not. And that is when Ron and his team started to rethink their idea in the new context. Ron: But then, you know, over time, and, and like, after talking with our advisors, we kind of had a shift in mentality, which was less, which, which pushed us to not be attached to our initial product, but to understand the market that we were operating in. Right to understand that everyone was operating in a huge position of uncertainty right now, no one knew what the future was going to look like, no one knew how to handle that. And we were just as we're as well positioned as anyone to go in and make something out of it and try to, you know, turn lemons into lemonade, or at least some portion of that lemon into lemonade. And, and that, and that's when we go in and actually rebuild a whole chunk of our product and pivoted to do to do more virtual engagement, and to try to work with admissions officers through this time and actually support them. And in coming up with a strategy in real time, how in the world do I go operate in this new reality? And that's where that's actually where I adore the product that it now is, and what ended up being came to fruition? Wright: And to remind you, the team was doing all of this while transitioning to online classes and responding to the covid19 outbreak on an individual, personal level. But the team looked at the situation with positivity. Ron Miasnik: classes were all virtual, there wasn't, you know, the distraction of social life or clubs or extracurriculars or activities or travel or like any of the other regular things that we do on a day to day basis. And, and we you know, we're scared to leave our house, right. And so it gave us the you know, we will just go and spend all day every day, going in going and working on the company in a way that didn't really happen when you're on campus. Wright: Adora’s virtual campus tour app was proven to be a timely solution during the pandemic! This is what Anne Johnson from the Admissions Office of North Dakota State University had to say: Anne Johnson: So we were exploring virtual tour options, as every college admission office probably does. This was actually right before COVID That we were exploring options, because we realized, you know, everybody was kind of getting to a place where they had these different virtual tour platforms. And all of the ones that I'd seen, you know, the really common ones, which we even have now, like you visit and some of those other ones I just never really loved because they didn't feel particularly personal or customized. And I'm on a listserv for an organization called simsa that other people who work in campus visits in higher ed are on and I saw post come through on that listserv about Adora from, I think one of the campus visit coordinators at Princeton, actually, who had shared about it. And she was like, Oh, this looks really interesting. So I looked on their webpage and asked to set up a call. And so that's how I found them was just through that listserv, and then met with Ron and his team pretty much right away after that. When I met with Ron initially to learn about the product was like right after COVID shut down, so and then it was even of most more importance that we get something that we could show a way for families to still see campus when they weren't able to visit our campus because our office was no longer open. It was in you know, like, April of 2020. So, um, that kind of shifted the urgency of us getting a product and I was just so impressed with what Ron showed and as his the pitch was just so so well done and his level of customer service was top notch, like some of the best still to date that we have ever received from a vendor. Wright: Even with a fancy tech solution to a problem, products have to meet the needs of customers. Adora worked hard to provide top notch customer service to schools like North Dakota State. This is a lesson from the Adora experience that any entrepreneur can take away. Another key partnership that Adora built was with the Coalition for College. Stacey Kostell: Hi, I'm Stacey Kostell, the CEO for the Coalition for college. The Coalition for college is a membership organization made up of 150 different colleges and universities across the country that is committed to access, affordability and student success. And together as a membership, we do a number of things, student programming and outreach and have a set of digital tools that students can use to do their college search as well as to apply to college. Wright: We can’t forget about the actual end users of Adora's tech solution. Here is where Adora’s partnership with Coalition for College created benefits for the users of the Adora app, especially the first-generation college prospects. Stacey Kostell: So I think after I had an initial conversation and mentioned, I was intrigued, I brought my team to meet with them, as well as a couple of additional members of Adora. And we really talked about this need that the students have to, and how they learned about college and the campus tour. And, you know, regardless of the pandemic, when students learn about colleges, sometimes some of those things that are most important through students being you know, how much is the cost and affordability. And as a first generation student or a student of from no BiPAP community will I will I feel supported, there is a place for me there. And I love the fact that they were creating tours that would allow students to have this information readily available to them, which was certainly the type of information that we were also trying to provide to students, but they were doing it in a, you know, college, by college way for students to learn more. So we thought it would be a great resource for students, but also a great resource for our members to be able to have this partnership with Adora to do kind of a small tour to begin with, and then have the opportunity to to encourage you to engage with them if they wanted to. Wright: In the next episode, we will take a deep dive into Student Entrepreneurship and analyze how students can take a business from zero to product and a 12-person team with multiple enterprise customers. Stay tuned for much more! (Princeton Spark theme music) Wright: The Princeton Spark is a production of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council. I engineered this episode virtually, working from home. Additional engineering by Dan Kearns at the Princeton Broadcast Center. Writing assistance by Aabid Ismail. Edited by Brandon Apter. Our theme music is by the Treadmills. Special thanks to Alice Seneres, Scott Colan, Ron Miasnik, Raya Ward, Joseph Rubin, Heather Masse and Tiffany Novak at Creative Circle. 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