Founder Stories: Alex from Kumo

From building a ADHD study tool part-time to raising pre-seed funding and building a team - Alex is helping students with ADHD stay in uni and improve their grades.
December 4, 2024
  •  
14
 min read
"I’d love to have a really tangible impact on improving the grades and retention rates of students with ADHD...Only 30% of neurodivergent students go to university and then only 6% of them will graduate"

Alex Kerr is the founder and CEO of Kumo, a learning tool for students with ADHD. 

We met Alex in June 2024 and helped her find her new CTO Jack. Since then, Kumo has achieved amazing milestones including: 

  1. Signing deals with 2 universities to start paid trials of their product
  2. Receiving their first pre-seed investment from a strategic angel investor
  3. Growing their team to 4 people

We caught up recently with Alex to hear about her founder journey and how she achieved these major wins. 


Hi Alex, tell us about you and why you started Kumo?

Kumo is a study learning tool for students with ADHD. The heart of it was born out of my struggles at University. I was someone who flew through school with no issues, then found university a lot harder - there was a really big gap there when it came to organising myself. I have ADHD and was looking for tools to help me stay on task, focus and meet deadlines but there wasn’t anything out there. 

By the time I graduated, I still couldn’t find anything. So in the end, I just ended up diving in and building Kumo.  

Originally, I was working in accounting and building Kumo part-time. When we started getting traction, I quit my accounting job, took a whole lot of ad hoc, little jobs just to pay the rent and went full-time with Kumo. 

How does Kumo help students with ADHD?

Essentially we are the coach to your academics. With ADHD the prefrontal cortex doesn’t work as well as it should. So you’re unable to properly use your executive functioning skills like organisation, motivation and focus. That’s where we come in. We help keep people on task and focused with games, stimulating UX and UI and help build those executive functioning skills so they can use them in every part of their life.

What do the next couple of months look like for you? 

To give some background context, we were running these short 4 week trials with universities earlier this year to get as much feedback from students as we could and iterate on the platform. Based on the feedback, we were able to make a very confident leap from what was a really small tool, to thinking “Hey, we can actually develop a proper platform here that we could start monetising and selling B2B!” 

This led us to pitch for pre-seed funding and we were lucky enough to bring on a very strategic angel investor. With the funding we are completing redesigning the platform so we can launch paid trials with universities next year.

So far, we’re lucky enough to have confirmed we’ll be working with Sydney University and Lincoln University in New Zealand. We’re in the process of negotiations with a few others and have a bit of interest from high schools as well.  

Our team has a huge few months ahead before we relaunch the platform for the academic year next February.

How did you convince the universities to give your tool a go in the first place?

I wanted to start building a connection with the university but I was very aware that we had a very clunky platform. We were at the beginning building and they definitely weren’t going to buy anything from us. 

Someone in the edtech world suggested to me “Why don’t you just do some small trials, have some clear metrics and KPIs of what you want to measure and go in with that pitch.” 

In the end I developed a very clear email scaffold used to reach out to universities. I would look at how many students they had, what the ADHD prevalence rate in Australia was, and I’d say - “This is the number of students in your university that probably have ADHD.” Then I would scour their disability action plan or key university goals and say - “These students are the ones contributing to retention rates, grades and things like that. They are battling way harder than they should be.”  Essentially it gave them the problem, our solution and how it directly affects their university.

Then I would explain that we’re looking to run these four week trials, what they could expect from them, how we’d take all of the work off their hands and give them a report at the end. They didn’t need to do anything. It was also an opportunity to build up a relationship with the disability advisor - and that was really the beginning of the sales cycle. 

How did you run your initial trials with universities?

We did about three trials initially. Each of them had about 25 students across a range of subjects and year levels. The trials were so, so beneficial. The students we worked with were absolutely incredible. They ripped apart the platform in the best way. They were brutal. But that’s what we needed. We built up a great community from it. We still message a lot of the students now and ask - “Hey, what do you think about this?”

With Canterbury University for example, 80% of the students wanted to sign onto future trials, even if they were being held at other universities. It’s because of them that we were able to get this funding and re-launch!

For our relaunch next year, we will be running paid trials, because we’re at the point where we can add value - even if we’re still testing things. 

So tell us about your business model? It sounds like you sell it to the schools who then offer it to their students?

That is our go-to-market for next year. We would love to mainly be B2B because university students are broke and busy, and we don’t expect them to pay. We also have other distribution channels we are testing though - such as reaching them through occupational therapists, ADHD coaches, parents and other people involved with students with ADHD. It’s possible that we have a B2B and B2C model. 

How did you raise your first angel investment? 

We basically have one angel investor who’s been incredible. Originally we were doing some pitching to VC funds. One of the funds that we pitched to was Seek Investments who have a focus on education and HR tech. They only invest in Series A though - so when we were pitching to them they said “Hey look, you’re a little bit too early for us.” However one of the partners there said “Hey, I can see where you are going and I’d love to dip in a bit earlier and be that first check for you guys.” 

It’s really great to have such a strategic investor onboard so early on because he’s been a VC in Ed-tech for well over 20 years and knows his way around the ecosystem. Hopefully he’ll also be able to help facilitate our next raise in the near future. 

What do you think convinced your funder to invest in you?

I think it’s because we were very, very clear on what we needed the money for and the timeline. Like I said, we had come off the back of all these university trials, and we really needed to make a bigger leap than these small iterations. He had that confidence in us early on, because he knew exactly where that money was going and why we needed it. 

One of his children also has ADHD, so there’s a personal side to it as well. Like me, he was saying, “You know, I’ve also looked for a solution for my children and I haven’t been able to find one. This is something I can really see the roadmap and trajectory for.” 

Can you tell us a bit about your team and who’s working with you?

We have a team of four. 

I’m the CEO, but pretty much covering all bases of the business, mainly driving sales right now. 

Gabby is our head of product. She’s currently looking after the UX/UI, gathering user feedback and analysing it. She has a background in neuroscience and specialised behaviour sciences. She really understands the psyche of someone with ADHD. I met her when she was making a pivot into neurodesign, and she just fell in love with the vision of Kumo as well. 

Then there’s Jack who SkillsRobin obviously introduced me to. It’s so funny, because he was teaching programming at my old high school, so it’s a small world. But he’s the CTO and brings a world of industry experience too. 

Then lastly we have Maddie, who is contracting with us and building the front-end of the platform.

Alex and the Kumo team

How did you convince your team to come on board?

It happened quite organically.  When I first started Kumo, I was working with another co-founder Aiden, who I met at university and he was the technical lead and I was everything non-technical. But Aiden ended up getting a really amazing opportunity in the UK, so mid this year I was back to square one - working by myself. 

I met Gabby through a design sprint we had with General Assembly. I really wanted to focus on the design and look of the platform because obviously neurodiverse people have very specific needs and I didn’t have the expertise to understand how we could service them through design. 

Then obviously I need a CTO who’s qualified and has a great background and skills. That’s when I found your platform SkillsRobin - and subsequently Jack. It was really fabulous to be honest. There was a very personal approach to your website - you know driving that connection between people. And when I started engaging with you, you were actually like a person, not a bot. Such a great and easy process. 

Meeting Jack has been incredible. I have been able to put all my trust in him to drive the technical side of the business. He was also able to bring on Maddie, who he’d worked with before.  

What does success look like to you in 1-2 years?

I’d love to have a really tangible impact on improving the grades and retention rates of students with ADHD. Right now, diagnosis rates of ADHD have increased substantially since COVID-19 and more people are starting to realise they have ADHD. Only 30% of neurodivergent students go to university and then only 6% of them will graduate. So it’s really low, and there can be a lot of shame and not much confidence if you do have neurodiversity, especially if it’s a learning disability.

We are starting with ADHD but we would really love to expand into other forms of neurodiversity as well, for example building out features for dyslexic students or students with autism or OCD. So having a completely inclusive education platform. 

In a few years time, I would also like to be a bit more global and be able to help a lot more people. In the UK for example, there’s a huge medication shortage and there are years-long waiting lists to even get diagnosed. So if we can have an impact, even before students get diagnosed just to help ease some of their pain, we’d love to do that. 

I imagine that even if someone isn’t diagnosed with neurodiversity, they might benefit from the platform. 

Yeah exactly. For example with our new version - we’ve launched a feature called “Your Sensory” profile setup. It’s something we’ve worked with occupational therapists on to help people understand what makes them tick, what makes them overwhelmed or underwhelmed and how to balance that. So when they have their sensory profile on Kumo, they can see when it’s time to move to a quiet room or when it’s time to have a crunchy snack and lie down to keep their central nervous system in equilibrium. To get this mapped out by an occupational therapist, it’s $900 minimum - so they can come here and do that for like $9 a month on Kumo and help treat themselves. We’re really hoping this has an impact on their ability to stay focused and productivity. 

Do you have any advice for founders that are trying to bring on an engineer or CTO?

It's definitely a big time investment. Be prepared to do a couple of interviews because you have to see how you get along and communicate as well as get a feel for their technical skills. Find anyone in your corner who is technical and get their opinion on what questions to ask. Even if you don't completely understand the subject matter, you can get an idea of the person’s expertise and capabilities and how they strategise

Definitely don't rush because you might end up meeting someone who knows someone fabulous and can help you connect, like you did for me with SkillsRobin. Those kinds of warm intros are really important.

Do you have advice for job seekers interested in working with an early stage startup like yours?

Really work out if you align with the vision of that company. The founder is usually obsessed with their business and the vision. If you show no interest in that, they're not going to want to work with you or they're going to see you’re not onboard for the long haul. I think doing your research into the market and showing you’re passionate about it, is just as important as your technical skills. 

Also it’s good to show you have that balance between being able to work autonomously, but also wanting to be a part of a team. Show you can manage and communicate with people and don’t just want to run a business by yourself. 

When I interviewed Jack, he had obviously done research into what Kumo was doing, understood the roadmap and was really honest and straightforward in how he would approach it.  He could also communicate the technical side of the business to non-technical people like me, in a way that doesn’t make them feel stupid. He didn't come in and say buzzwords like AI or innovation or things like that. 

I really wanted someone who could connect with the vision, connect with the team and drive the technical side, so Jack was really perfect.


Learn more about Kumo

🌱  Hiring?

Get in touch with pre-vetted software engineers and UX designers based in Australia.
Find talent

 🪴 Looking for a job or side hustle?

Create a profile on SkillsRobin and get invitations to connect from startup founders and hiring managers