Ready to use your skills for something that really matters?
You love learning, you want to have positive impact, and you would love a work culture that fits your life. You should be working with us at Prenda.
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My name is Kelly Smith, and I am the founder and CEO of Prenda, a company that helps people run microschools for small groups of K-8 kids. For a quick background, I am infinitely curious (recorded a rap album as a 10-yr-old), I love learning and building things (my master’s thesis was a far-infrared laser polarimeter to measure the magnetic field in a tokamak fusion reactor), and I started a microschool around my kitchen table in 2018, piloting a model that has grown quickly to become an exciting new education option.
As it turns out, parents were ready for microschools. The demand for our model has been strong (from 7 to 4000 students in three years), our team has grown to keep up (we have ~135 full time), and it feels like we can never find enough technical skills: product management, systems design, user experience, software development, data science, etc.
Prenda is a different type of company, and so we need a different type of person working here. We’ve been fortunate to find awesome folks, excited to hone their craft while contributing to our mission. I’m writing this post in the hopes that you might be that type of person and want to come work with us.
What you should know about Prenda
Prenda is a new model of education that combines the best aspects of homeschool with the social interaction and academics of a traditional school. The whole goal is to empower learners, which means we see each child as a human being with infinite value and infinite potential, and we have designed the experience to invite kids (and adults) to make a choice to learn, and to find the power that comes when you realize you can learn anything you want.
As it turns out, we weren’t the first ones to adopt this philosophy:
Have you ever tried to kindle a fire, without matches, lighter fluid, etc? It’s a delicate operation that varies a lot with factors like wind, temperature, moisture, fuel, and when it works it feels like a miracle.
Unfortunately, for many people the school experience is about filling a vessel — pouring in a series of lessons, facts, standards, and study guides with the hope that the child will be able to regurgitate the information when the state testing happens in the spring.
Needless to say, pouring water is not the best way to kindle a fire.
There is a LOT more I could say about this. If you are a “give me details” kind of person, or curious about the learning model we designed to kindle fires, you can watch this video and you can find more info at prenda.com
What type of people work here?
If you’re still reading, I’ll assume you are interested in the mission and your next question is about Prenda as a place to work. The best way to see this is to get to know the people who work here today.
Besides our shared obsession with empowering learners, here are two additional ways the people at Prenda are different:
- Commitment to our values. When we talk about start with heart, figure it out, dare greatly, foundation of trust, and learning > comfort, these are not words on a website or conference room wall. It’s how we show up at work and who we are as humans.
- Commitment to our humanity. We know there is a lot of work to do, but there are also people and relationships and all kinds of other things that matter. Most of the team are parents ourselves (I have four kids), and no one at Prenda feels embarrassed about their kid wandering onscreen during a zoom meeting.
Our hypothesis
Are you several years into a technology career and finding your professional goals conflicting with the life you want for yourself and your family? Maybe San Francisco is feeling too expensive and you want to move closer to family. Maybe 80 hours a week is not leaving you any time to be with your new baby. Maybe you want to build something that will directly alter life trajectories for good.
We think there are a lot of people facing these types of tradeoffs, and my hypothesis is that we can build an amazing company and do world-changing work without requiring the full sacrifice of family and all other aspects of personal life.
Here’s how it works.
- We are a fully remote team. We designed the company that way long before Covid, and although it’s not perfect, we have found that working remotely gives a lot more flexibility to balance your life.
- We live wherever we want. I chose my hometown of Mesa, Arizona, where I pay $1900 a month for a tidy 4-bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood.
- We care about people. Like, for real. We’ve been through success and tragedy together, both at work and at home, and everyone shows up as a human first. Seems obvious, but we frequently hear that this is “a breath of fresh air.”
- We have built the whole culture around learning, which means no one is docking you for mistakes. The cardinal sin at Prenda is refusing to learn.
- We extend trust and expect trust in return. No one checks to see if you’re at your desk at specific times. Instead, you commit to accomplishing something and we trust you to do it.
- We listen to everyone. Our optional company book club recently completed Dare to Lead by Brené Brown, and you will frequently hear people “rumbling with vulnerability.”
- We love to learn and believe that everyone has something to offer. Come share what you’re great at and learn from a group that feels pretty different from your standard tech company.
Ready to talk?
If you’re reading this and saying, “that’s exactly how I’d like to work!” then please get in touch with us asap. There are big problems waiting for you to solve them. Our jobs page is the place to start.
Or maybe you have a friend that came to mind. Can you please take five seconds and send them this article?
