Welcoming Our Newest Portfolio Company
SOWN TO GROW
WITH CO-FOUNDER & CEO RUPA GUPTA
ONE WORLD is excited to announce our newest portfolio, Sown to Grow. As an ed-tech platform focused on empowering schools to improve student social, emotional, and academic health, Sown to Grow is helping provide support for students struggling and the proper tools for teachers to help them. With a background in business and consulting, as well as education administration, Co-founder and CEO, Rupa Gupta, has combined her skills to create a platform that empowers struggling students and ensures that they receive the most out of their education.
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To learn more about Sown to Grow, we spoke with Rupa, who is also a member of our CEO Network and was a speaker during one of our Impact Webinars earlier this year (Financing Alternatives for Social Impact Companies, read webinar recap and watch the full webinar here).
Why did you start Sown to Grow? What was the motivation, and what is the core problem you are solving?
I founded Sown To Grow to focus on all aspects of student growth and wellbeing, beyond the traditional measures of academics alone. Before founding Sown To Grow, I spent a number of years working in a large urban school district and saw first hand that students can’t learn when they are emotionally struggling or distressed; as you can imagine, many (most?) are not learning right now. Our goal is build scalable school/district systems that improve student social, emotional, and academic health through simple student check-ins, reflections, goal-setting and feedback.
What is the hardest part of being a “pandemic era” CEO?
This is a tough question to answer! We definitely experienced ups and downs throughout the last 18 months, and I think the hardest part was the unending uncertainty. Schools shut down overnight, and our product had to shift quickly to meet student, educator and family needs in a fundamentally new context. I'm proud to say we doubled down in our investment in supporting student emotional wellbeing, and we're now seeing a bright light shone on the importance of these skills. But boy -- all the uncertainty was very hard.
What do you do to help relax, stay as balanced as possible, and stay in good health?
This is definitely still an area of growth for me :). I rely immensely on my family to keep me sane (I have two young boys, and an incredible "super-Dad" partner). It also is very helpful that my cofounder and his family are in a similar stage (he also has two young boys, a bit younger than mine). We keep each other grounded, which was especially helpful in the crazy days of full lockdown. For physical health, I find my best strategy is to train for an athletic event of some sort; otherwise, it's too easy for me to skip exercise. I rode my first "century" bike ride earlier this year, and I'm training for a triathlon right now!
What would you tell a first time entrepreneur who is just starting out today, that you wish you knew when you were starting out?
Think creatively about capital and resources. When we first started, we were exposed to a fairly narrow experience in the Bay Area edtech space. Companies raised money from a small set of well known VCs and that seemed to be the only path forward. Over the years, we've expanded our approach and been fortunate to receive significant funding in non-dilutive federal grants, coupled with diverse set of impact-oriented investors. This mixed funding model holds us accountable to our mission while also funding important research and efficacy studies. There are so many unfortunate examples of unintended consequences in technology plays, and we are determined to measure as we go -- even if that's not typically fundable work.
Wildcard question! Any question you would like to suggest we include, and then answer? Any topic that you want to address in this format? If not, that is ok too..
How about this: What does your ideal investment partner look like? We've worked with a lot of investor profiles over the years. Our best investors are deeply committed to our mission, and many are former founders/operators who understand the journey. They are patient, willing to invest in long game systems change, and are open to trade-offs between growth/profit for impact. ONE WORLD is ideal in this regard; their tag line of "profitably scaling impact" is exactly what we seek to do! We couldn't be happier to be part of this broader network and family.