KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 7 ― The wind is certainly in the sails of QuickSchools.com, probably the only Malaysian startup that has relocated to the United States because that’s where it is seeing the most traction for its online school management system.

Focusing on schools with 300 and fewer students, it has hundreds of schools paying a monthly fee with tens of thousands of teachers and administrators using its product.

Initially based in Malaysia, the founders took the bold step to move to San Francisco in 2011. The move has been a fruitful one, with 2013 shaping up to be their best year.

“We have seen months with double and even triple-digit growth compared with the same period last year,” said founders Aris Samad and Azreen Latiff during a recent Skype interview with Digital News Asia (DNA).

Azreen declared that the company is in the best shape it has ever been in, powered by a mature product that has been finessed and polished, with new enhancements in the pipeline plus their move into outbound sales showing promising results.

Before this, QuickSchools.com had relied exclusively on online channels to push sales.

They also credit the launch of their app store, with an initial seven apps they built themselves, with the sales spike.

Azreen Latiff, co founder of Quickschools.com. ― Picture by DNA

“When we spoke to you last year it was an idea we had, but now we have launched it and feel it is a true differentiator for us, with none of our top competitors having it,” Aris said.

Claiming that the response has been “very positive,” they are opening it up to external developers this month and expect the schools that are already using their product to be the first wave of developers, as they know best what they need exactly.

Taking all this into consideration, QuickSchools.com expects to be profitable in mid-2014, but the duo declined to share current revenue figures.

With momentum building, they feel the time is right to start reaching out and connecting with potential investors and collaborators.

“We expect to double our customer base next year and feel we have an exciting story that enhances our appeal. This will represent a serious opportunity for bigger investors to come in and accelerate our growth,” said Azreen.

Having said that though, they are also “definitely open to investors from Malaysia coming in, if it makes sense. You never know,” he added.

In terms of valuation, they are looking at US$13 million (RM41.36 million), but only next year when they hit some of their internal revenue milestones.

If that sounds expensive, the dynamic duo actually feels that they have “barely scratched the surface of what we are doing. We need to win the [US] market very convincingly,” said Azreen. A strong base

Unlike the typical Silicon Valley strategy of getting users and figuring out how to monetise them later, QuickSchools.com’s long-term strategy is focused on continually building traction with a paying customer base and strengthening its product.

“One of the frequent reactions we get when we are at events is surprise over the fact that we have customers and revenues,” said Aris.

The founders feel the strategy is sound as it makes them do the right thing and focus on the customer experience. They have also been very careful with spending money, with the focus all on executing their plan and running the business to the stage where they are at today, “where we have an amazing product market fit,” he claimed.

But make no mistake, this is a tough market with some of their more aggressive competitors having folded. The cautious strategy adopted by QuickSchools.com has proven to be a wise move.

Because of the traction they have, investments have been made in headcount to boost the team, especially in sales. From 15 people a year ago, today QuickSchools.com has over 30 people with a mix of full-time and part-time staff.

The move to hire sales people to conduct outbound calls to push QuickSchools.com was borne out of their confidence that they had a solid school management system which they could take actively to potential customers, instead of relying on customers finding them.

“With the sales people we have, we now initiate the conversation with potential customers and have also been reaching out to past customers. As a result, we have acquired a nice number of schools over the summer and feel we can scale this initiative,” said Azreen, who leads the sales push and customer service.

With their success, they are also growing out of their current market to target bigger schools or what Azreen calls “group schools” – schools with branches in various places.

The existing school management system covers between 80 per cent and 90 per cent of the needs of these group schools.

Aris Samad, co founder of Quickschools.com. ― Picture by DNA

“Closing this gap is what will make the difference in us making the sale or not, and we are really at the stage of learning together with this group of schools about tailoring our product for their needs,” said Aris, who oversees product development.

As they build on their success and now move to target larger schools, Azreen said that QuickSchools.com will now get into the radar of the larger players in this school management system space. Focusing on smaller schools all this while, it has been reasonably unaffected by competitors.

How this plays out, Azreen is unsure of, but he knows that all the ingredients are there for QuickSchools.com to accelerate its market and revenue traction, and the founders aim to seize the momentum.

So focused are the duo on building QuickSchools.com that they have put everything not relevant to achieving this aim on the back-burner – including marriage. In their mid-30s already and still single, they laugh this off. “This is just one of those things where if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail,” said Aris.

But you can bet your last dollar that they are not planning to fail with their main love, QuickSchools.com. ― Digital News Asia *The article was originally published here