Congratulations Jonathan Marceau for winning the Michigan Virtual Ed Tech 2023 Pitch Competition last week! We know how hard you worked for it and you had tough competition from many great teams.

For the readers, here is an overview of Jonathan and his entrepreneurial journey/success story.

The Story

Jonathan Marceau is an elementary school teacher in Shelby Township with 19 years’ experience. For the past 18 months, he has been working on bringing to life his classroom practice that has a proven track record in helping students spell better. Jonathan had launched into his entrepreneurial journey with his company Synapse Creations. 

8 months ago, Jonathan was introduced to Serendip by Natalie Bruno, customer and development lead at Jottful and Jessica Willis, founder and CEO of pocketnest. 

• Serendip helped Jonathan brainstorm a brand-name for the application that would excite children – Spelling Safari was born.
• We then worked to build a journey for 2 personas – Zoe, a 5 year old and Jeff, the 1st grade teacher. 
• We involved agile design and development practices to lay the design groundwork for a simple MVP.
• Soon enough, we realized that Jonathan needed a stronger financial model to help validate further spending on the design.

Enter Jonn Behrman – Serendip introduced serial entrepreneur and product growth extraordinaire Jonn Behrman to Synapse Creations.

• Together, Jonathan and Jonn developed the following 
  • Page by page mvp Figma experience for the student Zoe and teacher Jeff
  • Detailed MVP logic and functionality
  • A roadmap for MVP, Beta and V3 (spanning 1.5 years)
  • A financial model
  • Rigorous coaching to drive business value

The Pitch

In the meantime, Jonathan was working with a cohort of Michigan Virtual to prepare the content for the 2023 Pitch Competition. Video here.

• He overcame his nerves and stepped out of his comfort zone to talk about the value of Spelling Safari and the importance of spelling.
• He got validation from his peers and coaches
• Ultimately he won the following last Thursday.
• $10,000.00 grant money
• Foster Swift legal support
• Michigan Creative marketing support
• New Enterprise Forum (NEP) pitch pit invitation

The Future

It is incredibly exciting to see a client make use of all the resources provided and execute with such intention and attention. We are all very stoked about the purpose of this application, the people involved in bringing it to fruition and the validation from the community. 

You can reach Jonathan Marceau at jwmarceau@gmail.com.

Tools Used:  Figma, Trello, Miro, Google docs, sheets and slides