 From Phoenix, Arizona, the Cube at Catalyst Conference. Here's your host, Jeff Frick. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We are in Phoenix, Arizona at the Girls and Tech Catalyst Conference. About 400 people, fourth year of the conference. Something in the water here in Phoenix. Every time we come down here at some Women in Tech event, we were here two years ago for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, which was fantastic, so we're really happy to be here. Get a wide variety, really, of Women in Tech stories from the people here at the conference. So we're excited by our next guest, Tijal Shah, the founder and CEO of Kid Admit. Welcome. Thank you for having me. So what is Kid Admit? So we help parents search, compare, and apply to preschools based on criteria that's important to them. And so we partner with the schools, we give them the technology to bring their admissions process online, hence making it easier for parents to find schools nearby to them and based on criteria like philosophy that's important, schedule, that sort of stuff. So just for preschool? Right now, just for preschool, the bigger vision is to add more products and services as the kids get older and so we'll have this great rich data set of information on parents so then we can give them more relevant recommendations and things that fit in their lives for their kids, like other extracurricular activities and that sort of stuff. So it's kind of like helping people with the college admission process but for the five year old, right? So I mean, I got kids, it seems like it's really kind of a function of proximity is probably the number one thing or is it en route to my office so I can drop the kid on the way to or from? What are some of the factors that are less obvious that people use in kind of deciding where they want their child to go to preschool? Yeah, I mean parenting has changed because everything's available on the tips of your smartphones. So everyone's researching so many more things that are trying to make it more relevant to the child. It's not like, oh, we're gonna send the kid down the street to the nearby preschool anymore. It's like, oh, we really want this philosophy because they're gonna excel in that and really that's kind of the more subtle things that parents are doing now is because it's so easy to find this information, matching up what's gonna make their child succeed in these environments. And then how are the preschools? Because now that you're saying that, I'm thinking of all these preschools in our neighborhood that are very, very different and kind of look and feel and the way they operate. How are you collecting that data? How are they getting you that data? How excited are they to have the opportunity to actually communicate how they're different rather than whether they're on the main strip to the freeway? Yeah, it's actually really exciting because I think that technology has changed so much since we started Kid Admit and At First. There was a little bit of hesitancy because people were like, what are you doing? What is this? Why do you need a technology solution here? And as technology has changed so drastically in the last few years, all these schools are very excited to be part of a platform that makes their reach a lot bigger. You don't have to just put up flyers in your neighborhood anymore. You can attract people in a slightly bigger geocode and there's been a lot of new preschools opening up as well for the demand and it's nice for them to be able to be a part of a platform and easily get to families really quickly. Okay, so just a little bit more on Kid Admit. So you said you're three and a half years old. Yes. And did you raise some outside funding? Yes, we raised $1.15 million over a pre-seed and a seed round, so we're still at early stage. Congratulations. Thank you. And what metro areas do you operate in? So we're in about 9,000 preschools across 20 states and we're poised to be nationwide soon. So we are actually here in Phoenix. We just launched here recently, which has been pretty exciting. And yeah, so we actually have listings for more than that many schools, but the ones that partner with us. So we get the information from the state licensing and then we do our own data and get more data on our data mining efforts. After that, we reach out to the schools directly so they become member schools and then they can add any information that they need that makes their program special. And with that, once they be part of the platform, then it's easier for parents to navigate the whole process. From how many preschools do generally people kind of search through? What's kind of their TAM, if you will, when they're trying to figure out the preschool? They start with how many and they whittle it down to one. What do you kind of see? Yeah, so it's interesting. Most people only hear about five and then you go on Kidd-Adminton Search in San Francisco. There's 357 preschools. Obviously that's not the pool that they're gonna go after. It's probably gonna, based on a couple criteria filters, it'll probably whittle down to maybe like 10. And so now you're not researching 350 or getting down to 10. But even if they go a little bit specific, it's usually they'll really evaluate about four to five. And what are the top five factors? Not necessarily the value in the factors, but the factors that they're looking at that help drive the decision. Yeah, location is definitely a big, big factor. You wanna make your life as convenient as possible and you don't wanna have to, if you're dealing with work and kids and if you have multiple kids you wanna keep that obviously pretty proximal. And it could be on your way to work too, like you mentioned earlier. Then philosophy, so Montessori, Reggio, is it play-based, and schedule is a big thing, whether you want part-time or full-time. Interestingly, people talk about price, but ends up being a secondary factor because people want what's best for their children and they wanna see what all of those options are available. What is the most surprising factor that you had no idea mattered so much to people as you've gone through this process? That they think that it's gonna dictate the rest of their child's life on this first educational milestone and it's just surprising that how it's completely false and it's just crazy to see how much people still buy into this. Right, right. It's like the old Seinfeld episodes, right? From Manhattan and people trying to get in that first, getting in that first school. But that's not what you're about at all. You're really about just knowing what the options are and finding the right fit. Yeah, we wanna democratize it a little bit, give access to it. So a lot of people in Manhattan or even San Francisco hire consultants to help for this. And they're like $15,000 to help you just with preschool. And so, you can search kid admit for free, you get to see all the information, things that giving access to more families to make better choices for their kids. And it's all about finding a nice environment for your kid who's gonna develop a lifelong love of learning. That's the only thing about preschool that makes it great. And how did you come up with this idea? So I have kids myself and I went through the process. It was super, super crazy because Google didn't spit out any results when I did this. It was the oldest one, seven and a half. And when I was pregnant, people were like, are you on the wait list? I'm like, I don't even know my child. How am I gonna go and find a preschool at this stage? So I didn't take that advice. I'm like, you know what? If I will do this when it's appropriate and I feel like comfortable and I did and then I created this crazy spreadsheet and because it wasn't a lot of information available on the internet, so I'd have to call around and end up being another full-time job of mine. And once I created this, then a lot of my friends started using it and using it, so that was kind of the start of kid admit. Awesome. So we've had a lot of conversations here over the course of the day about pivoting and getting involved in tech and not necessarily being a tech person and changing career paths. We talked a little bit offline before we came on air. You've got kind of an interesting journey. You started out as a mechanical engineer, I think you said, and then got into finance and now you're doing a kid-based, basically marketplace exchange. How did that happen? I think I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur though I didn't quite, was not truthful to myself when I was younger, and I became a mechanical engineer. I worked at Ford Motor Company right out of school designing fuel systems and then I did a lot of other things, ended up in finance and I kept switching these careers but I learned all these different skill sets and all these different things than when you become CEO and start a company, they actually really are very relevant because you get to, you know, I have to book keep and manage my own finances for the startup. I've had to, you know, for when I did financial services, I also cold called. I did that when I started doing early customer development. I did marketing for a medical devices company a long time ago and that's part of it. So all of this journey as different as it is, it kind of led me to be able to be a generalist to start a company. Right, and then what was the tipping point that you said, okay, I'm doing it. I'm gonna start this company, I'm gonna quit my job and do this. Yeah, so I wanted to leave financial services after 2008, so it's been a, you know, yeah, well, but I still stuck onto it for two more years because in that timeframe actually four more years, in 2010 we left to start our own wealth management firm, my husband and I, and then I wanted to ramp that up before I could actually formally leave to start my own. So I always wanted to knew I did it, but I wanted to have the timing as well as the idea. Great, great. Okay, so we're running low on time. So what advice would you give to, you know, the budding entrepreneur out there that's got an idea that just needs that final little, you know, kick out of the nest to go for it? What are some of the learnings that you can share and advice that you would give them? Yeah, well, you'll never have, you'll never be ready just like anything else in life. You know, so you just have to kind of take that leap of faith. You're not gonna know everything on the journey and there's something sweet about that. It's something, I kind of missed some of the nigh activity I had when I first started this because it keeps you like really excited and passionate and relevant in that. And tenacity, resourcefulness, you definitely have to have those things and just enjoy the journey because as much as it's a high and low and roller coaster of a startup experience, if you have to, you definitely have to enjoy it and I've gotten to do some really amazing, amazing things and meet some incredible people along the way and I relish those times. Excellent. Well, Tijol, thanks for sharing your story with us. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. Absolutely, so great story and entrepreneurship. Eventually you gotta jump out of the nest. It's never easy, but as you said, there's never a right time. You just gotta go for it. Like everything else that's important in life. So thanks for watching. We're here at the Girls and Tech Catalyst Conference. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching.