Get to know: Blue Ocean Brain
Boosting brain health through critical thinking exercises.
Meet Clare Herring - one of the founders of Blue Ocean Brain and members of the Lighthouse Labs Fall 2014 cohort!
The Quick Hits
Founders:
Claire Herring
Gemma Brooks
Laura Howard
HQ: Glen Allen, VA
Industry: eLearning
The elevator pitch: Blue Ocean Brain is designed to elevate employee performance and boost brain health. Employees dive right into the critical thinking exercises. And companies love offering a daily development tool that inspires while teaching big-picture thinking to their people
What inspired you to start Blue Ocean Brain?
Having worked in corporate America, our group of founders had access to many e-learning tools and products. Through 2010, most e-learning was the stuff you did was mandatory compliance oriented or long-form training that felt very sterile. We saw a need in the market for e-learning that was inspiring, fresh, and consumable in the flow of work.How did your team meet and
At what point in building your business did you realize you needed the help of an accelerator?
While perhaps not useful in the newsletter we didn’t seek out acceleration but were introduced to Lighthouse through a colleague in Richmond and decided it would be a good next step to fuel our growth.
What is something you learned during the program that you've kept with you as Blue Ocean Brain has grown?
We gained a greater understanding of how to raise capital and why this is not always the best path for everyone.
What was your biggest challenge that you overcame as a founder?
Dealing with the length of time and the continuous iteration needed to get to product-market fit. Everything take longer than you expect and pushing through doubt and uncertainty can be challenging.
How did you define what you view as "success" for Blue Ocean Brain?
Being able to sit back and hear and see the tremendous value we are bringing to our clients, hearing our BOBers (Blue Ocean Brain employees) describe their pride and the growth they have experienced in their career.
As your company has grown, you have continued to stay involved with Lighthouse and are currently on our board. What made you decide to continue being a part of the Lighthouse community beyond your cohort?
As the only alumni on the board, I’m glad to represent the Lighthouse experience from the authentic voice of someone who has been thru it to help future founders gain the most benefit from the unique experience to accelerate without giving up equity.
The Health and Safety Institute (HSI) on their acquisition of Blue Ocean Brain :
"Blue Ocean Brain brings an on-demand, daily engagement microlearning platform and content suite that enhances HSI's position and offerings in the HR training and professional development marketplace," says Chad Birckelbaw, CEO of HSI. "Their mission of helping employees learn and grow every day sits squarely in our value system as an enterprise that is committed to continuous improvement and our value proposition for being a sole-source provider for EHS, compliance, and professional development needs of customers." (HSI)