Soon after we launched Coursicle at UT Austin (which is where MyEdu was the most popular), we exploded. Tara was the one who thought we should do the work to launch there as soon as possible and she was absolutely right. She added UT Austin and 3 weeks later we had 19,000 users just from UT. It was insane. It also got the attention of the former founders of our biggest competitor, MyEdu. They had been bought by Blackboard and then got shut down. The founders wanted to pitch us on something.

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The pitch was fucking stupid. They wanted to recreate MyEdu. It was clear that they weren't satisfied with how the acquisition went and they were trying to almots bully us into joining their team. They made it seem like they had more traction than they actually had, they also said they had a bigger development team and when we pressed for more info they told us that they had outsourced it, etc. These weren't founders. They were hacks. Wouldn't be surprised if the only reason MyEdu existed for as long as it did was because the founder's dad was on the board of the UT college system or whatever and convinced them to invest like $10 million of UT's money into MyEdu to extend their runway. Blackboard acquisition might have been an acquihire because they were about to run out of money. This is why you don't give away control of your company (or raise money; why become dependent on something when you don't need to be, frankly this applies to coffee, alcohol, drugs, etc.).

His name: Chris

Has John briefed you on Coursicle, or would it be helpful. 

Total user count is 32,000. 


Currently, registration is happening, so we’re growing at ~13% a week. (11% last week, 16% this week (past 7 days)). In the last 30 days, we’ve grown by 39%. 
We’re strategically launching at MyEdu schools. Launched at UT Austin two weeks ago, already have 4700 users from there. 	

* They reached out just last week. Said they had been working on a project and Coursicle came up. 
* During the call, they were definitely trying to make it seem like they had all this really valuable experience that we needed if we wanted to grow Coursicle really big, and that they already had five software engineers working on something. 
* We asked what we can do for you. They said they knew there was going to be a big hole when MyEdu shut down, and they knew that they could fill that void, and so they took a look at the existing market for ways to “accelerate their business”, and they found us. They said essentially they’re hoping to find a 1+1=3 situation, and they said “whether that’s some type of merge, partnership, or just putting more fingers to keyboards”.


Questions: 
* What are some things we really need to watch out for? Like, things we should not do or say during the calls? 
* What are they expecting from us for this? 
* So, how transparent should we be? About marketing, about our tech? We have what are essentially trade secrets, both in tech as well as some things we’ve discovered that are great for marketing.