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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 and 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

• What have you learned recently? What are you working on to become better at? [3:53]
• What do you find yourself asking for help for, lately? [4:59]
• What have you learned about learning? [7:40]
• How are micro schools similar or different to charter schools? [10:31]
• Why do we lose our creativity from childhood? [11:30]
• Lack of black & white scenarios in entrepreneurship [15:00]
• Why Jakub likes school [16:01]
• What is the one-room schoolhouse? [17:43]
• In these micro-schools, what’s the ability of the teacher? [19:41]
• What is the child care desert? [21:40]
• What are you doing with WEEKDAYS? [23:29]
• How did the pandemic affect WEEKDAYS? [25:10]
• Were you acquiring educators (supply) as well as parents & kids (demand)? [30:14]
• How did you think about the matching of supply & demand? [32:45]
• How WEEKDAYS has launched features for payments, text messaging, and curriculums [34:06]

Links from Episode

• Connect with Shauna: LinkedIn | Twitter
• WEEKDAYS
• 4 Quadrants of Personality Traits (Brian Tracy)
• Micro Classes
• Bloom’s 2 Sigma Study
• The History of Public Schools in America
• Mindset by Carol Dweck
• Child care in crisis
• Child care desert infographic by Center for American Progress
• Bright Horizons
• Madrona Venture Labs
• What is a Seed Round
• One-Room Schoolhouses Make a Covid-19 Comeback by Wall Street Journal
• Become a WEEKDAYS Founding Family
• What is NPS
• What is an MVP

What was your favorite ‘lesson learned’ from Shauna? Comment below!