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Welcome back!

This is our new, special season of The Daily Marketer, where we’ve spoken with over a dozen marketplace leaders & pioneers from Uber, Convoy, Bellhop, Doordash, Rover, as well as rising stars, so to gather proven blueprints, hacks & tactics to growing a marketplace. Enjoy!

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Shauna Causey is the founder & CEO of WEEKDAYS, the leading micro-schools marketplace with the largest network of teachers who meet 6-8 students in small learning programs in a neighborhood home or small classroom.

The early days of the company go back to Madrona Venture Labs when Shauna, who was a Partner, couldn’t find a daycare or preschool nearby with an opening, so she decided to solve her own problem.

But before that, Shauna Causey won Washington Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” award, and was honored as “Digital Media Leader of the Year” by PR News.

Shauna has a long history of being an executive, advisor, partner at landmark brands like Nordstrom, Comcast, and Google. Later, she got deeply involved in startups @ Decide (acquired by eBay) & Startup Weekend.

Over the course of 18 months, WEEKDAYS has grown to over 2,000 teachers in multiple major markets like Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles, & San Francisco, while developing programs across the rest of the country.

We dive deep into micro-schools…the challenges of building a skilled-worker marketplace, “accelerated growth” during COVID-19, the “childcare desert”, maturing a marketplace and ensuring “quality” over quantity.

This episode is particularly valuable for anyone who wants to learn from an experienced marketer launching a marketplace. specifically anyone who wants to learn the proven product & marketing details unfolding in a marketplace, “in the thick” of the early days.

Please help grow the show with us…by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or on your favorite podcast platform. 

Show Notes

• Had you always planned for (WEEKDAYS) to be a marketplace? [1:28]
• Why is (educator) churn so high? [3:21]
• How do you manage quality (of educators)? [4:40]
• Holy grail of a unskilled workforce, is them supporting each other [7:11]
• How are you finding your flywheel? [8:16]
• Do wait lists entice other educators? [11:51]
• Can educators get benefits? Are they independent contractors? [13:42]
• What is the scaling plan? What is being a Founding Family? [16:52]
• A founding family can not only be a customer, but an educator? [18:48]
• Building an engine metaphor, and how they’ve partnered with Ada Developers Program [19:32]
• How are you going to get more customers and educators? [21:28]
• Rapid Mayhem questions! [23:31]
• What’s the next big step-change in marketplaces? [32:00]
• Where can we find you? Any asks of the audience? [36:14]

Links from Episode

• Connect with Shauna: LinkedIn | Twitter
• WEEKDAYS
• Micro Classes
• Average churn for educators
• Maker Week
• What is a flywheel
• Bright Horizons
• What is a market rate
• What is an independent contractor
• Platform Scale by Sangeet Choudary
• KinderCare
• Ada Developers Program
• Child care desert infographic by Center for American Progress
• Assurance
• impact.com
• What is partnership marketing
• Etsy
• Cloud Chandelier
• Sidecar (defunct)
• Love Home Swap (family home exchange)
• Luxe (valet marketplace)
• Flybuy
• Thumbtack
• Taskrabbit
• Angi
• Clubhouse (social audio app)
• What is augmented reality
• Parker Dewey (micro-internships)
• The history of chat rooms
• joinweekdays.com

What marketplace lesson did you learn in this episode? Comment below 🙂