Startup Founder Interview: How Allie Digital CIC Is Building Better Technology for ADHD Learners

Welcome to HackerNoon’s Writing Prompts! Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. 1. What is your company in 2–5 words? Building accessible tech for ADHD learners. 2. Why is now the time for your company to exist? At the moment, no custom designed support is available for ADHD learners, so there is a gap in the ed tech market that hasn’t been addressed just yet. 3. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? It’s only me at the moment! And oversight from security teams that extend outside the organisation itself. For now it’s just me, the solo founder, but also I have partners on board too informally until any future possible formal investments come in. 4. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? Breaking tech for security research specifically, which is what I do mostly in my free time, or building tools to automate the parts of my life that are repetitive or that trigger a neurological condition that I have. I love making things easier for myself since I have an invisible disability, and then using whatever I design and build to let other people know about it so they can apply it or use it for their barriers aswell. 5. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your metrics? Growth. If you’re at a new point or crossroads in 6 months time from where you previously were, then it doesn’t matter if you haven’t got that promotion yet, or if the money hasn’t come pouring in just yet, success is measured by your ability to grow, less than speed. Evolving is more important than cashflow in the early days before you start making money so that you’re ready to handle those responsibilities when they do come in. 6. In a few sentences, what do you offer to whom? Accessible web technologies to learners with ADHD and comorbid learning difficulties. Alot of the feedback was from users that had overlapping Dyslexia and ‘Dys’ SpLD’s, so the current MVP maps to that effectively. 7. What’s most exciting about your traction to date? Other B2B companies are knocking the door now, aswell as investment bankers and other professionals who tend to start coming out of the woodwork just before you move in to your next phase. That’s the most exciting part, because when the phone starts ringing, that’s when you know something is moving. That’s a signal of alignment coming in from your ecosystem. 8. Where do you think your growth will be next year? This time next year, and I want to use the word ‘hope’ because things are always changing, but next year it would be good to have 100+ users on the freemium tier, a SOC2 compliance certification and the first few B2B customers to administer a custom enterprise offering to, that would be a good growth metric to sample in. 9. Tell us about your first paying customer and revenue expectations over the next year. Nobody has paid just yet, because of licensing restrictions with the early open source model combined with the CIC structure. At the moment the user base is free trial testers only. Unfortunately due to restricted regulations in the UK, a B2B offering to clients isn’t available from Allie Digital CIC just yet until an audit is performed. Once that gets passed however, I would be hoping for revenue generation in the 6-7 figure region. Again let’s keep the focus on ‘hope’ here! 10. What’s your biggest threat? AI assisted cyber attacks. As a security researcher and avid user of technology and computers since childhood, I’m well aware of the catastrophic security risks that come with any product offering mapped through a business structure. It literally does not matter what size of a business you are, whether it’s just one person (aka, me for example), or a massive conglomerate with 25,000 employee’s, AI has accelerated technological advancement to the point where your average Joe on the street now is a target, you don’t need VIP, CEO, VP, or even Celebrity status anymore. We’ve all got targets on our backs now. This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke’s ten questions for startup founders.