A couple of weeks ago, I applied for a position at Piazza. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of talking to several employees through email and Skype, learning about the company in the process.
Piazza is an education technology company based in Palo Alto, California. Since its foundation in 2009, Piazza has had one mission: to help college students by levelling the playing field.
Their flagship service is a forum-style Q&A platform. The main function is to allow college students—especially the more shy, introverted ones—to openly ask and answer questions about their courses. As an added bonus, professors and teachings assistants (TA’s) are also on the forum to help answer students’ questions.
Once they had the Q&A service down pat, Piazza moved on to addressing another key issue facing college students: jobs and internships. The company has since created a recruiting service that directly connects employers and recruiters at top companies with the college students who use Piazza. During one of my interviews, I actually got to use the service as a Piazza employee and see first-hand just how valuable this is. It levels the playing field in job-hunting by helping ensure that the best students get chosen, regardless of background and connections.
Piazza is doing great things to help college students, my favorite group of my people. During my conversations with their employees and from my own research, I was actually able to take away a few key lessons that will serve me well in the rest of my life. I hope they help you all as well.
Lesson #1: The Riches are in the Niches
Notice from my introduction that Piazza didn’t try to solve 10 different problems for 10 different groups of people. They didn’t even try to solve 10 problems for 1 group or 1 problem for 10 groups. They focused on solving 1 specific problem for 1 specific group.
Their target audience is college students. Sure, they could have targeted every student at every level in the entire world. More potential users equals more money, right? Wrong.
Instead of trying to cater to every single student population, Piazza started with just undergraduate college students (they actually did a trial run with just Stanford students, before rolling out the service to more universities). You see, each level—high school, college, grad school—has its own unique set of complexities. It was much easier for Piazza to become the go-to service for one group, than to try and become the expert for three or more groups.
It was also much more profitable for Piazza to dominate 1 niche than to be average or so-so in 3 niches.
And notice that they only focused on solving one problem. Their initial goal was to democratize access to education at the college level. They did this by creating a service that allowed any student in a class—regardless of personality, GPA, background, etc.—to ask questions to his or her classmates, TA’s and professors.
It was only after they had mastered this Q&A service that they moved on to their recruiting service. Which brings me straight to my second big lesson.
Lesson #2: FOCUS = Follow One Course Until Success
This has got to be one of my favorite acronyms. FOCUS stands for “Follow One Course Until Success” and that’s exactly what Piazza is doing. It’s no wonder that they’ve experienced the success that they have had so far.
They picked one niche and focused intensely on solving just a single problem for their target audience. For years that was all they did. But they did it well.
I know because I used the service for a couple of my college courses. Piazza really helped me out when I took Linear Algebra. Now, I consider myself a “math guy”, but linear algebra was way different from all the other math classes I’ve taken. I was completely lost and I am really glad I had a service like Piazza to help me out. I ended up getting an “A” in that course and Piazza definitely deserves some credit for that.
There are thousands of stories like mine from students all across the country. Even professors and TA’s praise Piazza. The Q&A service has done its job, thanks in no small part to Piazza’s decision to “follow one course until success”.
After their successes with this service, they decided to branch out with their recruiting service. They stuck with the same target audience, held true to their values and mission statement, and made a logical decision with expansion. Their decision to add a recruiting service fit perfectly with what they were already doing.
By continuing to focus—and not trying to do or be too many things at once—Piazza is now experiencing similar success with their recruiting service.
As someone who considers himself to be a bit too much of a jack-of-all-trades or a Renaissance man, this is an important lesson for me to learn. I’ve always felt that to achieve success I would have to learn many skills, become an expert in multiple fields, and dominate multiple niches.
Piazza has shown me that this isn’t true. You can be successful by solving just a single problem in a single niche, and focusing intensely on your one solution. Once you master that one solution—and only after your fully master it—you can move on to solving another problem. Just make sure that new problem affects the same target audience and it aligns with your own values and purpose.
In everything you do, remember to FOCUS: Follow One Course Until Success. If you combine the “focus mantra” with the next lesson, you will be incredibly successful in your niche.
Lesson #3: Commit to Lifelong Learning
I spoke with Piazza’s Director of Engineering and he told that prior to joining Piazza, he had very little computer programming experience.
Yes. That’s not a typo. The Director of Engineering at an education technology company had limited programming experience when he joined the company. He got his current position through loads of on-the-job training and education.
That’s how committed Piazza is to developing its employees and that’s how committed its employees are to lifelong learning.
When I asked him (the director of engineering) about this, he told me that as an education company, of course Piazza had to be committed to the continuing education of its team. Lifelong learning was normal for them.
It’s also an important reason for their success. A company’s greatest resource is always it’s employees. The best companies don’t just have the best employees; they develop the best employees. And these employees return the favor for the education and professional development provided to them through hard work, loyalty, and innovation. These employees become what Seth Godin calls “Linchpins”, people who are absolutely indispensable to their organizations.
The most successful companies are the ones with the most Linchpins, which depends entirely on the level of commitment the company and its employees have towards lifelong learning. Based on what I know of Piazza, I can safely assume that they have plenty of Linchpins, so their success is no surprise.
I’m here to tell you that you can commit to lifelong learning right now, regardless of whether or not you are part of an education-related organization. You can become a Linchpin right now, simply by committing. Your education is ongoing and you are always learning and growing.
I am a firm believer that graduation is not the end of education, but merely the beginning of a new phase of education, what I like to call “real-world education.” This refers to education “on-the-job” as it pertains to both your career and your personal life.
Remember, “the more you learn, the more you earn.” If you want to be successful, you’re going to have to learn something new every day.
You need to learn career-related skills like leadership, writing, public speaking, computer programming, and a foreign language. You need to learn the standard life skills like filing taxes, being a good friend and partner, cooking, and basic home repair skills. You need to learn what I like to call “fun skills” like fishing, skateboarding, golf, and crochet.
Be a lifelong learner. Of all skills. Commit to this. The more you learn, the more you earn.
If you can do these three things—(1) find and dominate a niche, (2) FOCUS: follow one course until success, and (3) commit to lifelong learning—you will be incredibly successful in what you do…just like Piazza.