In early 2020, Scott Martin left his role as principal at Sweet Home High School in Amherst to focus full time on his startup, ThinkTech. Then the pandemic hit.
Schools were propelled into remote learning, and administrators’ top priorities became actions such as procuring personal protective equipment.
Martin had a decision to make. Should he continue his startup’s current focus – a learning platform to give tools to teachers to use all the technology at their disposal in the classrooms, and throw resources at something that might not happen? Or should the business pivot to focus on education's hot button at the time, remote learning?
He opted to stay focused on the original mission, and to not try and make sales during the pandemic.
“One thing I constantly made sure I instilled in my students: You will always regret 100% of the chances that you don’t take,” he said. “I just felt I needed to live by the same messaging I lived by as a teacher.”
ThinkTech, based at 207 Commerce Drive, Amherst, used time during the health crisis to build awareness of its technology by making contacts in the industry and doing demonstrations virtually and then, when allowed, in-person.
The startup has since picked up steam. The business in late 2021 and secured an agreement with the state’s Board of Cooperative Educational Services to be a vendor that state public school districts can do business with and qualify for state aid. That’s about 740 potential customers who can easily purchase ThinkTech’s product at a lower cost.
The three-year agreement went into effect during the 2022-23 school year. While Martin said it’s too soon to give a specific number of district customers, the startup currently has thousands of users (students and educators) using its platform. He expects that number to jump to about 30,000 by the end of the current sales cycle.
ThinkTech, which employs five and two part-time contractors, is working on selling directly to local charter and parochial schools.
“What we’ve built is a robust suite of tools and live teaching features so that while an instructor is delivering a lesson to students, they have the flexibility and tools to act on data collected by the platform to customize learning in real time,” Martin said.
ThinkTech recently started selling to customers outside New York state and hired a director of sales based in Arizona to focus on the West Coast. There are large school districts in the west and the selling environment is different, often with less regulations than East Coast systems, Martin said.
“The sales cycles might not be as constricted as some of the red tape that goes into New York state,” he said.
