When COVID-19 forced Ed Farm’s in-person teacher training programs online in March 2020, Beth Sanders recognized a market opportunity. Teachers waste hours in irrelevant, district-mandated training sessions, while principals can afford quality training for only a handful of their staff. 

Sanders had the domain expertise to solve this problem—decades of experience in education and a clear vision for competency-based, personalized professional development with human assessment and micro-credentials. What she didn’t have was a tech company to build it, the time to wait years for traditional development, or the budget to hire expensive technical leadership.

“I don’t know how to develop. I don’t know UX, I don’t know UI,” she admitted. “I know that what I do, I do well. But I also believe firmly that the smartest person in the room is the room.” 

The Approach: Building a Tech Company from the Inside

Sanders engaged Sightglass to take her concept and bring Modiv EDU to reality in just over a year, leveraging the entire service portfolio. This comprehensive approach allowed Modiv to capture its market opportunity without the typical delays and costs of building internal technical capabilities.

Grow: Market Validation and Strategy

The engagement began with a four-week Growth Mapping exercise that validated the market opportunity Sanders had identified. The team conducted extensive research to confirm demand, identify target segments, and sharpen the business model. This wasn’t just theoretical strategy work—the report focused on the most consequential questions and empowered the team to tackle them as quickly as possible. 

“John’s ability to ask questions is unprecedented,” Sanders reflects. “Really great teachers ask really great questions, and that’s what John does. I would leave each meeting feeling like we’d achieved something concrete, but also like I’d learned so much.”

Build: Solution Design and Product Realization

Instead of waiting to hire a technology lead or technical team, Sightglass immediately translated educational requirements into technical specifications and a developmental roadmap. They designed a platform architecture leveraging existing Ed Farm infrastructure and created a user experience optimized for teacher workflows. 

This rapid building phase demonstrated what typically takes startups years and millions in venture funding. Instead of the traditional cycle of fundraising, hiring, failing, pivoting, and rebuilding, Modiv went straight from concept to functional platform.

Lead: Advisory and Leadership Development

Recognizing that sustainable success required internal product leadership, Sightglass didn’t just build and leave—they helped Modiv hire the right leader. They participated in recruiting and interviewing VP of Product candidates, ultimately recommending David Preece for the role.

“I came in somewhat midstream, after Sightglass had already done significant work,” Preece explains. “I wasn’t sure what to expect—would they be territorial? Would the handoff be messy? Instead, I found an asset. They had done thorough market research, identified customer needs, and defined the MVP so clearly that I could hit the ground running.”

The handoff was seamless because Sightglass had built everything for transition from day one. “John had the foresight from day one to say, ‘We’re giving this to David. We’re not here forever,” Preece notes. “That mindset made all the difference.”

The Results: Venture-Speed at Enterprise Quality

In just over a year, Sightglass enabled Modiv to achieve what typically requires years and millions in investment:

Speed to Market From initial Growth Mapping to market-ready platform in just over 12 months—a timeline that venture capitalists dream of but rarely see. This speed allowed Modiv to capture the post-COVID opportunity while competitors were still planning.

Cost Efficiency By providing comprehensive services across Grow, Lead, and Build, Sightglass eliminated the need for Modiv to hire multiple expensive roles—no CTO at $300K+, no product team at $500K+, no strategy consultants at enterprise rates. The nonprofit-turned-tech-company achieved venture-backed results without venture-backed burn rates.

Quality Execution “Two weeks before my soft launch keynote, I realized we didn’t have a landing page,” Sanders recalls. “I called John in a panic. He said, ‘I’ve got you,’ and within one day, there was a proposal. They follow through. There’s never a timeline missed, and it’s always quality work.”

The platform launched with a differentiated micro-credential system, secured approval as an official provider of professional development hours in Alabama, and transformed Sanders from educator to tech CEO—all while maintaining zero timeline misses.

Organizational Transformation Perhaps most remarkably, Sightglass built a tech company on the inside of a nonprofit. They didn’t just deliver a product; they transferred capability. “John knows our work so well he could pitch it for me,” Sanders marvels. “How cool is that? That’s the boutique advantage.”

Preece emphasizes the lasting value: “Instead of needing to pivot their work, I found myself asking, ‘How do we empower them to do more?’ Timing was critical for getting this to market, and I realized quickly that I had a committed team already knee-deep in the work.”

The Sightglass Difference: Why This Doesn’t Usually Happen

What Modiv achieved in just over a year is the exception, not the rule. Internal corporate startups typically fail after years of effort. Private equity firms shell out millions trying to buy this kind of transformation. Venture-backed startups burn through rounds of funding attempting this speed to market. Why did it work here?

Modiv EDU’s success demonstrates what’s possible when deep domain expertise meets comprehensive technical execution at venture-speed. In just over a year, a nonprofit educator became a tech CEO, a grassroots training program became a scalable platform, and a market opportunity was captured rather than studied to death.

“This is the difference between a studio approach versus a typical consultancy,” explains John Jarosz, Sightglass Partner. “We became part of our team. We went from Growth Mapping to MVP to hiring a VP of Product—all in the time most companies spend just planning and hiring.”

“That’s more than consulting—that’s building a company.”