Class Texts is a service that delivers text notifications before class begins to help make sure that students are never tardy or miss class. I recently had the opportunity to ask the founder, Chad Aharon, a few questions about the business.
What is Class Texts?
Class Texts delivers text notifications before class begins making sure students are never tardy or miss class. Students have many options when to receive their text notifications. They can be sent out 60, 45, 30 and 15 minutes before class. Some students select one or two of the times, where most of our students select all four. Class Texts also has an Event Reminder where students can receive notifications for important events such as quizzes, research papers, study groups, labs, flight homes, etc. With Class Texts you will never have to work about being late or missing another class or appointment again.
Can you tell me a little about yourself? Your background?
My name is Chad Aharon, founder and president of Class Texts. I was born and raised in Queens, New York, one of the five boroughs of New York City. I received my bachelors degree from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh in secondary education and received my masters degree from Grand Canyon University in curriculum and instruction. Besides starting up Class Texts, I am a 9th grade World History teacher in Durham Public Schools in North Carolina. Although education is my passion, I have always been interested in the business aspect, especially growing up in the city and having friends and family in the business world.
Where’d you get the idea?
As a high school teacher I keep great relationships with students who graduate. They often keep in touch with me via email or Facebook. One day I had a bunch of students visit me after their freshmen year of college. As we were talking I asked them all what the hardest part of college was and they all replied time management. One of them who wanted to go into law, was taking a political science class and had a paper due at the beginning of class. He explained how he was at the library doing research and lost track of time and was five minutes late to class. His professor did not accept it and his grade went from an A to an F. I joked around telling him I would shoot him a text before class to make sure he wouldn’t be late again. Then the idea hit and I explained it to a few college students who were all on board right away.
What was the process for building a business around SMS?
After doing much research my program writers, my sales team and I realized texting was replacing emails and phone calls in many ways. I had a student in school tell me she she only had 100 minutes a month of minutes to talk. I thought that was very low and made that comment. She told me she barely even used 50 of the minutes and explained how many students would rather text than talk. She even made the comment that talking is somewhat awkward now. So we thought sending text messages would be a great way to send reminders to students. Our programmers researched it, set up relationships with the phone companies and servers and Class Texts was born.
How much does your service cost?
For the 2010-2011 year Class Texts is 100% free. We feel before we set up our service we want to offer it for free to make sure it runs perfectly. We are offering it for everyone, college student or not for free as part of our beta group. To sign up just go to www.classtexts.com and click subscribe.