Get to know: Team Excel

What inspired you to found Team Excel?

Team Excel started as a program within a nonprofit called Excel to Excellence, which was started by Michael Robinson, a former NFL player and Richmond native. I had done a lot of community work with youth programming and had worked with pro athletes and their foundations in the past.

When my firm was hired to manage Excel to Excellence, my first task was to create a program beyond an annual football camp - that new program was Team Excel and we started running it in schools and building out a team of program directors and managers. We ended up in four schools and knew we needed a new model to scale further and faster. So we took a year to think about our options. We considered staying a nonprofit and going to an affiliate model like a Boys and Girls Club or the YMCA, but we knew that technology could give us the chance to go further faster. So, we incorporated in February 2019 as a Virginia Benefit Corporation where we still have a social mission as part of our bylaws (improving student outcomes and increasing volunteerism among youth) that is baked into the DNA of the company.

How did you decide to work on this idea?

My interest in youth development and education goes back to my mom - she was a schoolteacher and she raised me and my sisters as a single parent on a school teachers salary. She worked at Mosby Middle School, now MLK, an inner-city school in Richmond Public Schools. She started during the first year the school opened and when she retired 37 years later she was the only teacher left from the original school. I grew up seeing her dedication to her students - she was much more than a teacher to her students and had a real impact on young people in and out of the classroom.

She was a math teacher and she groomed me to be an engineer but I was always an entrepreneur in spirit - I’d share my flyer of “John’s Grasscutting Service” when I was 12.

As I got older, my company was providing cause marketing services for companies and universities and began helping pro athletes with their foundations and charity events. I became a bit weary of those foundations since players would often start strong when they were in the league and then they’d let them go when they retired. But with Michael, it was evident that he wanted to do more than a football camp or a toy drive - he really wanted to build out what I call ‘the meat and potatoes’ of a foundation and I decided to take his offer.

What do you hope to get out of Lighthouse and acceleration?

I was initially leaning towards not applying because I had done so multiple times in the past - but of all of the times I've applied, Team Excel is now, without a doubt, at the best point in terms of initial traction with our product and positioned to scale. With a working product and paying customers, I knew that Lighthouse Labs could add the knowledge, community and resources to help us accelerate our growth and meet some ambitious but obtainable goals for 2021. Plus, as a member of Startup Virginia, I had seen other companies go through Lighthouse and I saw how much they grew from it!

Fourth time was the charm and now that we have a platform and a few customers - it is time to grow. We know the model works in person and we have data and metrics showing increases in GPA, self-efficacy, academic motivation, leadership and citizenship. Now the platform is proven out after running digitally for a year. Through Lighthouse we are focusing on solidifying our sales process and moving from leveraging our natural networks to scaling to wider reaches.

“I knew that Lighthouse Labs could add the knowledge, community and resources to help us accelerate our growth.”

— Johnathan Mayo, Founder

What are the most exciting moments of your entrepreneurial journey thus far?

Perhaps the most important milestone and success we've had is our students that are in college with several from our initial cohort graduating this year. When I see their success and hear them talk about what Team Excel has meant to them, this is the ultimate milestone! In fact, some of them are still involved today and the video on our home page is narrated by one of our former students who is currently at William & Mary on an academic scholarship. He was in our program from the 8th - 12th grades from Varina HS.

In his sophomore year at W&M and he gave a TED talk -and it gave me chills to see how far he’s come. I remember when he was in the 8th grade - I saw something special in him and asked him to speak at one of our fundraisers and he got a standing ovation. He always says Team Excel helped get him there and that we are part of his success - he’s a powerful young man now.

Just the other day, I received a text from a former student, Asia Farmer, sharing her graduation announcement and saying thank you for all of our support over the years. She also shared that she was going to graduate school to be a licensed counselor. Seeing former students succeed, and receiving these types of messages is the fuel that keeps me pushing through the challenges of being a startup founder!

What have been the most challenging moments of your entrepreneurial journey thus far?

Going virtual due to COVID resulted in a lot of change and disruption in the education last year. We were ready to go to market but people wanted to wait until they figured out what a school day would actually look like before they implemented new systems - even digital ones that were made for this environment. We even had schools that had already paid that wanted to wait until the new school year to implement the product.

It has been tough to know that we can help but not be able to because schools are in survival mode and can’t focus on anything other than the immediate needs. We know kids are facing more challenges than ever and need support more than ever, but schools just could not take on another thing right now.

We’re starting to get past that as we enter post-pandemic life and we’re seeing school districts planning for summer and fall and being back in person. We know that learning loss is going to be a big problem - by the fall students will have been disengaged for 18 months and schools know that they need tools to help with motivation.

The good news is schools have more funding with CARES Act funds and other federal and state support, to address the huge task of addressing learning loss and the social-emotional health of students.

Step one is being engaged and motivated and ready to learn - you can have all the tutors in the world but if kids are not eager, ready and motivated to learn, it doesn’t matter. That’s where we can make a real difference.

How have you worked with partners like Capital One?

Kimberly in Cape Town, South Africa - she’s traveled to more than 40 countries

We’ve been fortunate to partner with Capital One since Team Excel was founded in 2014, and they have been with us through the evolution from non-profit to social enterprise. Our pilot program of Team Excel had three teams of 10 students and each team had 4-5 mentors - Capital One had their own team.

Each year they had more and more volunteers – they provided grant money, and our students participated in field trips such as career days and leadership development programs. -It’s really incredible how much they’ve supported our growth over the years.

Currently, they are supporting us through their pro-bono consulting program. They started by building an API integration to allow us to move data directly from student information systems to our platform. They had already started on that project and then I went to Matt Briggs, Vice President of Product Management, and said, “You know what would really help? A mobile app.” They weren’t sure if they could do that but Matt asked around and connected me with their mobile team - they thought it was a cool project and we’ll have our first version in June.

We’ve also been fortunate to work with their brand team’s pro bono support, led by Elesha Belke, Director of Brand, who are doing some brand identity work and marketing strategy. We couldn’t be luckier and it is great to be able to continue working with them through Lighthouse Labs - their associates attend our weekly cohort standups and will run technical audits for each of the teams.

What founders or companies do you admire?

I’m really thankful for Will Morris of EdConnective and Joe Belsterling of MajorClarity - both have always been willing to help and provide information and connections. They’ve been ahead of me in the journey but are both in the EdTech space. We all have different companies but the same vision of impacting and developing young people - we’re all just doing it in different ways.

We also have a bigger group of EdTech founders with John Failla of Trilogy Mentors, Steve Van Dam of Light the Music, and a few others. Having that group has been so helpful - we can support one another through our little collective - we try to meet monthly and during early COVID we were meeting weekly to share resources.

What is your big vision for Team Excel?

To have a global Team Excel league where we have student teams all over the world competing with each other to motivate one another to do better in the classroom and in life. We have our first international team in Canada right now and it is so exciting to imagine kids in Canada and in Richmond and all around the world not only competing and improving themselves but also developing relationships and learning about other cultures. To be able to facilitate cultural awareness between groups that had never interacted, especially kids who have never been outside of their own city, would be so incredible.

How can we connect with Team Excel?

You can check out our website and reach out if you know a school district or nonprofit organizations who may be interested in supporting student success! We are also looking for brands that are interested in sponsoring Team Excel leagues and engaging their employees with our virtual mentoring tool through our app. This is a great way to engage employees that are working from home and still want to give back through group mentoring.