When do students log on and how long do lessons take?

The majority of students participate in PenPal Schools in the classroom during the school day. Lessons typically take 30-45 minutes each, so a topic containing 4 lessons would typically take 3-5 class periods. Some teachers choose to assign PenPal Schools as homework or to participate as an after-school activity. All topics are self-paced, making it easy for students to participate and easy for teachers to fit into their curriculum.

Do students communicate using video?

All communication on PenPal Schools is written. This enables schools to participate despite differences in time zones and internet speed/reliability. Written communication also helps students to practice core literacy skills and ensure that all students can share their ideas - not just the loudest!

Can students enroll without a teacher?

Currently all students must be invited by a teacher. In the future, parents will be able to enroll their children once we verify their identity.

Are scholarships available?

PenPal Schools is proud to offer scholarships to schools in need. We routinely provide our product for free to schools serving low income communities.

What is PenPal Schools' student safety protocol?

Why are you crowdfunding?

We’ve raised money the old-fashioned way before and could likely do it again. This time, however, we’ve chosen to raise money on Republic to provide friends, family, and our community with an opportunity to be a part of our journey. Our program has grown and evolved thanks to the support of some truly amazing teachers and administrators. We are so grateful for all they have done for us and for their students, and we are thrilled to offer them the opportunity to share in our success.

Of course, we welcome support from those who are new to PenPal Schools as well, and we hope that all investors will share PenPal Schools with the teachers and school administrators in their networks.

How was PenPal Schools started?

The PenPal Schools story is a great one! But it’s also pretty long, so when you’re ready, check out this 10-minute video: The PenPal Schools Story

Do you have your Meet the Drapers episode transcript?

Joe:                              My name is Joe Troyen, and I'm from Penpal schools. When we got started it was just about connecting students to share perspectives. Eventually I traveled overseas and I had an opportunity to see how many students around the world, kids around the world are learning English, how many are getting connected to the internet and it struck me as kind of a need for students to be connected. Why are they not connected already? Why can't they have an opportunity to experience places outside of their city or town? What we do has really evolved to be a much more well-rounded project-based learning platforms that's connecting students to collaborate and learn and I personally have evolved to know and care much more about what's happening in schools and how we can improve them.

Tim Draper:                  Welcome to meet the Drapers, give us the pitch.

Joe:                              Alright, thank you are you nervous?

Tim Draper:                  No, actually but it's really good to have you on the show.

Joe:                              I just want to make sure we're on the same page. My name is Joe Troyen. I'm the founder and the CEO of Penpal schools and we connect students from around the world to learn together. Penpal schools connects students from over a 150 countries, over 300,000 students. This is why I ask if you're nervous. You're about to learn about the greatest learning resource on the planet. We are growing virally all over the world. We are changing the way that students learn and the reason that this is happening so quickly is we're perfectly timed for some massive changes that are happening in schools everywhere.

Joe:                              Change number one, they are getting connected, right. They are getting online, it's not all text books anymore. Students are getting online, there is devices in the classroom. Over 90% of US classrooms are connected to the internet and this is happening all over the world. Another big shift that's happening is a revolution in the way that teachers are teaching and the students are learning. Schools around the world are recognizing that memorizing facts for tests is no longer an effective way to learn. Teachers are leading a revolution away from memorization and test taking and towards project-based learning, right.

Joe:                              Students are collaborating together in a more authentic way as we do as adults. Students can connect and collaborate with Penpals all over the world through our online projects. Students are working with peers in over 150 countries to design robots, right. They are writing collaborative poems, they're fighting climate change, building reading skills, writing skills, social and emotional skills, those skills they need to succeed.

Tim Draper:                  I agree with all of these. I'm trying to get to what is your business model? How do you make money because we're still trying to figure it out?

Joe:                              I talked about how schools are shifting class time towards online resources, they are shifting their budget too, right. Over half of US states have shifted their budgets from books to online instructional materials of which Penpal schools fits right in the center of that category.

Bill Draper:                   What is your revenue?

Joe:                              We recently monetized and now our revenue is over $30,000 a month. We are profitable.

Bill Draper:                   In how many schools do you bring in that income?

Joe:                              We have over 50 paying schools at this point.

Tim Draper:                  Are they public or private?

Joe:                              All across the board. There's public, private and chartered. There's a mix of all of them. What it used to be is you got take the superintendent off for a round of golf, maybe buy him a nice dinner, right and that was very hard for education startups to crack it. What's happening is the freemium model is really taking a root in education. We have a free product that teachers all around the world use and love and tell your principal if you want to buy it and that's been the recipe for our successes because we've focused on building something that students and teachers love.

Anousheh Ansari:          Do you create the educational material yourself? How does the projects come about?

Joe:                              Many of them we build ourselves. Some of them we build with publishers, so time for kids they built a project with us called protecting the planet which connects students from around the world to learn about climate change, pollinators, fracking and they said, hey, Penpal schools can help to connect students around the world make that content more engaging.

Bill Draper:                   Language wise how does a kid from Africa talk to the kid from Canada?

Joe:                              Two huge trends happening around the world. Technology is spreading everywhere, the other is English because I have been fortunate enough to travel in my life and been able to see first-hand kids running up to me in the streets of Indonesia, whose parents don't speak a word of English and they can't wait to tell me about their life and ask me about America and I said there are so many millions of students that want to connect with you and learn about your community and you can practice your English with them.

Tim Draper:                  Can you give us an example of say fake news? You got that as sort of a category. How then does this tie in to being a Penpal?

Joe:                              A teacher would go onto penapalschools.com and would select the fake news project and then the teacher would give a code to the kids. The students all create their usernames and passwords. What happens then they decide what they're going to create. Some students are going to create a public service announcement, right, others might do a fake news quiz and we share it in the Penpal school showcase for a whole community of students around the world to see what you've created, add comments, react to it, questions. We have built in lessons with videos and texts for students to learn about fake news, collaborate with kids around the world and help them create their projects.

Tim Draper:                  If I'm a student and I'm in Africa, say, what's my incentive to go look at some other student's work instead of like watching a great YouTube video?

Joe:                              The incentive is authenticity. You remember in school writing just to be evaluated by your teacher, how boring is that. People want to be connected. Give students an authentic audience to write to and you will see writing scores shoot through the roof.

Polly Draper:                 They see the kids? Is it a Skype situation?

Joe:                              No, we can't ask this class to be on at 3 pm central standard time for a Skype call with a class in Chicago, so we've built Penpal schools to be accessible. There is no live streaming video. It's written communication. They can get on whenever and wherever they get internet access, so what we've created it's built to be accessible because students everywhere deserve an opportunity for progress.

Bill Draper:                   How do you make those connections with the school in Africa let's say?

Joe:                              One of the great things about education when teachers like something, they share it. Teachers are on blogs, so when they find something good, they share it. I'm not flying around the world visiting schools, pitching Penpal schools. This is a teacher driven movement that's happening.

Bill Draper:                   What is your education?

Joe:                              I got a undergraduate degree in international relation from Pomona college in Spanish. I can do the pitch in Spanish too if you want.

Tim Draper:                  Go ahead. [foreign language 00:22:29]

Joe:                              No, I'll spare the audience that.

Tim Draper:                  Why are you doing this? What's your background and why do you care about all this?

Joe:                              I was a software designer and I got really, really good at talking to people, understanding their problems and designing software to fit their problems. I was fortunate enough to be able to travel overseas and at this time Penpal schools existed but we didn't have this ambitions. To me it was a side project and in that time that's where I was just struck over the head by the fact that English was spreading everywhere, that internet was spreading everywhere and I was staying with a host family in a small village in India when my co-founder, he emailed me said “I'm going to shut it down, I'm not going to do this anymore.”

Joe:                              I spent that night just thinking about all the teachers I had met in my journeys across these countries, I was going to have to send them an email the next day saying, “Hey, you remember how I promised we're going to connect your kids to learn around the world, we're not going to do that,” and I just all night long was just thinking about this terrible email that I was going to have to write and I woke up then I said, I'm going to see if I can make this thing work. Moved back to America and I got into this because I was infected by the passion of the teachers that I've met from around the world.

Tim Draper:                  Thank you so much for coming into meet the Drapers.

Joe:                              Thank you very much for having me.

Bill Draper:                   Terrific. Congratulations you have come a long way.

Joe:                              Thank you very much. I think it went pretty well. It's hard to say. They all seem to get the value. I'm very passionate about the teaching and learning side of things and spent less time talking about the business opportunity, hopefully that passion is contagious and they see that we're solving a real problem in having a lot of success doing it. There is a market out there for what we are doing and hopefully that's why we didn't feel the need to dig in more. We started this republic campaign because we want our teachers to be able to invest in educators and the people that we serve, they know the value of what we've created. They see the impact that it's having in their classroom. For teachers out there, we want you to have a chance to share in our success. We also want you to enroll and check out Penpal schools and try it in your classrooms and then for all of you other viewers, we invite you to come be a part of this, help to support Penpal schools. We're very proud of what we've accomplished and I'm always eager to share with new people.

Tim Draper:                  Well, what did you all think of Penpal schools?

Bill Draper:                   I thought he is terrific and he's done something he is passionate about. It's all about kids. I'm in favor of that and he's found a new way to reach them, educate them, I'm all for it.

Anousheh Ansari:          I love it. I mean education is such a great gift that any kid can get because no one can take anyone's education away from them, so I love what he is doing and his passion for it. It's truly coming from his heart and connecting, collaborating in this way online and getting kids to learn from each other's culture and experiences. I love this.

Polly Draper:                 I felt the same way. It's already a whole other dimension of education.

Tim Draper:                  Lot of fun, really interesting. Any concerns you have?

Anousheh Ansari:          If he can add translation and allowing people to communicate.

Polly Draper:                 Because there are lot of people that don't speak English and certainly don't speak English well.

Tim Draper:                  Yeah, what I thought he was going to say was...

Polly Draper:                 I thought he was going to say too there is a translation...

Tim Draper:                  Google translate that's one of big thing that's happened.

Polly Draper:                 That's exactly what I thought he said. This is the big thing. Big thing that's happening is everybody's learns English.

Tim Draper:                  But instead he just said English is spreading. I'm not sure that's true as much as it used to.

Polly Draper:                 I don't that if it's true either.

Tim Draper:                  Good, okay, well so let's consult the crystal ball. This time it's sort of humming to us.

Polly Draper:                 Yes.

Tim Draper:                  Yes, okay thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs all around boom

Polly Draper:                 Oh yeah.

Tim Draper:                  Four up. Okay, well so that's, that was our vote but you have an opportunity to vote up or down or to invest go to meetthedrapers.com, and you can invest in Penpal schools, so let's bring on the next entrepreneur but before we do it, let's take a look at what's going on behind the scenes.

Naresh:                        Hi, my name is Naresh.

Yogi:                             Hi, I'm Yogi.

Naresh:                        We run a company called Fretch. When we moved to Manhattan in New York, we realized that getting our groceries was an absolute chore. Unlike regular mainstream groceries, ethnic grocery stores are few and far in between. It was a long trip back and forth and it's harder to procure and which is why it you know something that kind of affected us or bothered us.

Yogi:                             The passion that he had behind Fretch is what drew me closer and wanted me to go ahead and be part of Fretch and just grow and expand.

Naresh:                        It's a common problem that we set out to solve. A problem that we've seen in many other families throughout in Manhattan, New York and I'm sure many other places as well. Fetch and fresh. We fetch fresh groceries for you.

Tim Draper:                  Welcome to meet the Drapers. Give us your pitch.

Naresh:                        Sure, my name is Naresh.

Yogi:                             And I'm Yogi.

Naresh:                        We run a company called Fretch out in New York. Fretch focuses on ethnic groceries depending on which ethnicity you look at, it's about 10% to 15% of the US population, so you could estimate the overall market size to be between 65 and 100 billion dollars annually.

Yogi:                             Grocery delivery has really become such a hot market, so it's attracting a lot of new businesses and a lot of new ideas but despite all this, we feel that ethnic communities are being overlooked and underserved. It's so hard to get ethnic groceries.

Naresh:                        For example, when I moved to Manhattan, New York, my wife and I would have to take a 45 minute trip one way to get our groceries. It was an absolute chore and there were no delivery options, so it basically started from my personal pain point, that we started Fretch and we knew at least 10 other south Asian families who had the same exact problem and that's how Fretch started. It started from the back of my car to now where we are which is at 20,000 orders delivered, were at a one million dollar revenue run rate annually. We've been incessant about our quality, about customer service, about the overall customer experience, that we feel that now our product is mature and there are customers absolutely love us for it.

Tim Draper:                  I don't quite get why this is going to be better than Uber eats or DoorDash. Do we need another delivery service?

Naresh:                        Are there any of them that focus on ethnic?

Tim Draper:                  No, they don't focus but you can certainly get it.

Naresh:                        The way they make money is by buying from retail at retail prices and the way they make money is by adding a mark-up on top of the retail price. They're paying you know a higher price on basic groceries. We don't do that. We have a set up where we buy directly from distributors. We have savings and we pass the saving onto the customer. You might have an aisle you know in a big supermarket but the basics and the staples you still have to go to an ethnic store.

Yogi:                             What they mainly do is their whole job is just to pick up and deliver. They don't understand the backdrop and the importance of ethnic groceries. Now, in Indian there's like 20 different brands of rice, so to get that service we offer all that. That's something that Amazon Fresh doesn't offer, Walmart doesn't offer. We're not just a delivery company, we're a customer service company. That's our main focus.

Anousheh Ansari:          What is special about your customer service?

Naresh:                        We are very responsive. We give a no questions asked refund policy. People love us for it. Not just in terms of how we respond or how we deal with customers but we treat them like family.

Yogi:                             Lot of these customers give us feedback that we actually use and use their input to grow. We're like hey we should try this, we should try this, hey, why not try this and we take all that into account and to establish where we are now.

Bill Draper:                   On the million dollars of revenue, are you profitable?

Naresh:                        Yes, we are profitable. When we started out we had a very similar model where we were buying from retail stores and we were making money just by adding markup and it wasn't really going anywhere and so we decided we had to change something, so we modified the business model, we set up a warehouse, we have distributors that we work with and we introduced profitability in the system because of that and now we feel we're at a point where we've worked hard on the internal processes, on our supply chain, on our logistics ...

Tim Draper:                  You know Anousheh spent a 11 days on the space station and I'm wondering if you have had any deliveries up there currently they are very short of fresh food.

Anousheh Ansari:          And also, your taste bud changes so you like spicy food so some really spicy ethnic food they would probably...

Naresh:                        It's probably out of our delivery network right now but we ...

Tim Draper:                  Are you only delivering in New York?

Naresh:                        Only in New York right now.

Yogi:                             For now, yeah.

Polly Draper:                 Who are your customers?

Naresh:                        We started with only south Asian but the plan is to include other ethnicities also on the platform, so we intend to use whatever we've learnt and experienced so far and basically leveraging existing infrastructure.

Polly Draper:                 It seems like you are you have the easiest time procuring this stuff because there is so many ethnicities who are also close together you get stuff from Chinatown or you go up it's not as if it would be as hard in New York as it would be somewhere else.

Naresh:                        It is absolutely. Even here we understand the problem and the solution immediately. No one's really doing it.

Tim Draper:                  I'm still concerned about competition, so there is Instacart or Goodeggs I believe that they are buying wholesale and then bringing them in. I don't think they are going out to the big supermarkets, so the ethnic thing could just be a feature.

Naresh:                        They are trying to compete with you know the Walmart's and Amazons of the world but the ethnic population as I mentioned is about 10 to 15% of the US population.

Tim Draper:                  What does this look like in 10 years?

Naresh:                        The dynamics going to be that we have set up in major metro areas, be it you know The Bay Area, be it New York, be it Chicago. You have big chunks of ethnic populations in all of these, so right now we're in New York. There is a big Greek population out in Astoria and Long Island city and so that's our next target that we are trying to go for.

Yogi:                             We perfected our infrastructure for South Asian groceries. Now the only thing that needs to be changed is to add other ethnicities and expand from there, so we are scalable within the next couple of years.

Anousheh Ansari:          Do you ship or do you deliver?

Yogi:                             We locally deliver.

Anousheh Ansari:          So, you actually, physically someone ... You actually maintain a fleet for delivery or you contract with like an Uber?

Naresh:                        We contract with a delivery company and they provide drivers as and when they're needed, as many as we need.

Anousheh Ansari:          If I order in the morning you deliver it in the afternoon?

Naresh:                        Same day yeah we can deliver it same day?

Tim Draper:                  What are your backgrounds?

Naresh:                        My background is more of corporate. I've worked for companies like Deloitte and McKenzie and City group and that really wasn't my calling, so about four years ago is when Fretch started and then so I knew this is where I had to be and this is where I end up.

Yogi:                             Yeah, and I come from a hospitality background. I was managing a hotel and from there I moved on to grocery, locally that serves ethnic grocery so I went onboard and realized the grocery base is huge and this is where I met Naresh as well so he had already started Fretch, he was still new, he was looking to see where to procure some of the distributing goods and that's where I reached out to him and then from there we built connection and a friendship and then from there that turned out into a business partnership.

Tim Draper:                  Terrific. Well, thank you for coming into meet the Drapers.

Yogi:                             My pleasure.

Tim Draper:                  Good job. Good luck. Alright.

Yogi:                             Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Naresh:                        I believe everyone did understand the problem that we're trying to solve.

Yogi:                             Anybody can go onto Amazon fresh or any of these big companies and order a gallon of milk or apples and oranges right but not everybody can easily order special type of Basmati rice, special type of produce that we have, the spices and the lentils all these things are not easily available. When it feels like hey, I want a chicken tikka masala, yeah that's not one thing that's in there. There's tens or twenties of different masalas that go into one dish and we have all those masalas available, so if you want to make chicken tikka masala at home, oh, it reminds me inside Tim was getting a little hungry ...

Naresh:                        Yeah, they were getting hungry. On hindsight I think we should have been more clear about the exact roadmap we want to follow about the next steps that we want to get to maybe specified the exact cities we want to get to or the ethnicities that we want to target.

Yogi:                             We need to show everybody not just the South Asian community, the Greek community, the Far-eastern community, everybody in between to say hey, ethnic groceries is something that we need and we needed easily.

Tim Draper:                  Let's see what the judges thought. Judges, what did you think of Fretch?

Anousheh Ansari:          I think they're addressing a definite need in the market. I like the idea. I don't know how scalable it is when they want to go across geography and across ethnicity, how they can scale their model and stay profitable.

Bill Draper:                   That's a good point. I don't know how they can either. I think you put your finger on it. It may not scale the individual deliveries and getting the right kind of ...

Polly Draper:                 Because where their passion was South Asian food but what they have to do is get equally passionate people who ...

Bill Draper:                   Chinese food.

Polly Draper:                 Chinese and ...

Anousheh Ansari:          They are very hands on everything was like they talk to their customers, there is a lot of personal delivery.

Tim Draper:                  That's a real positive that they are customer oriented are really good. My biggest concern is competition as I mentioned there. Amazon might just take over this business where you are going to get delivery of whatever you want by drones service, to your house. You're going to go, they're really nice guys who delivered that ethnic food to me but here I'm getting my curry you know just like that through Amazon. I'm worried about what the dynamic is later. I do like that they're almost to the point where they are farming the stuff that does add to their margins which is a really smart thing.

Bill Draper:                   I think it would make it but not very big. I don't think it will ever get, as you say, a really good multiple.

Tim Draper:                  But we all know it's an enormous market and it's growing but this maybe a niche part of it and do you think first to go to Fretch or do you think first go to Instacart or something else. Okay and now let's get the vibe.

Polly Draper:                 Let see.

Tim Draper:                  Okay, do you feel Fretch okay feeling not so Fretch. Okay so for Fretch are we up, down, all around boom. I'm at three quarters.

Polly Draper:                 I'm at half.

Tim Draper:                  I was the most ... oh dad's got a three quarters.

Bill Draper:                   I'm about the same way.

Tim Draper:                  You two are sideways and we were sort of three quarters. Interesting.

Polly Draper:                 That makes what? You are the math guy. That's is one and a half.

Tim Draper:                  It's a total of one up. Now you the viewer can go ahead and decide, thumbs up, thumbs down or you can invest.

Bill Draper:                   Or at least you can order from Fretch.

Tim Draper:                  Or you can order from Fretch. Go ahead you can invest go to meetthedrapers.com and give it a shot.

Polly Draper:                 Yes.

Tim Draper:                  Stay tuned you are going to see one of these amazing bitcoin blockchain interviews, it's coming up right now.

Speaker 16:                  If you were to design currency today, it would not look like paper.

Speaker 17:                  Live long and blockchain.

Speaker 16:                  Three words fund the revolution.