Jeni Barcelos is the Co-Founder and CEO of Marvelous, the world's most beautiful all-in-one teaching platform.
Chad talks with Jeni about what makes Marvelous different from other teaching platforms out there, the importance of elevating women to leadership positions, and why applying for and getting accepted into an accelerator program was the right path for the company.
Marvelous (https://www.heymarvelous.com/)
Follow Marvelous on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJZ_kWoBcXJuSKP1iofXsAw), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/heymarvelous/), or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/marvelous-software/).
Follow Jeni on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenibarcelos/).
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Transcript:
CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Jeni Barcelos, the Co-Founder, and CEO of Marvelous, the world's most beautiful all-in-one teaching platform. Jeni, thank you so much for joining me.
JENI: Thank you for having me, Chad. I'm excited to be here and excited for our conversation.
CHAD: So I'm really excited to dig into more about Marvelous as well. So why don't we start there? What makes Marvelous different than other teaching platforms that are out there?
JENI: Marvelous is different in that we prioritize design, I would say more than any other competitive platform. And we also prioritize live events in a way that I think is pretty unique. So we started in the wellness space. We primarily are serving wellness creators, although all kinds of other creators use our tool as well.
So we specifically built Marvelous with the goal of serving their unique needs, which involves a lot of teaching live classes and having a really great community space where students and clients can build relationships with each other. And then, because our audience has a particular design aesthetic and is non-technical, we've created the tool in a way that makes it really easy to make something look beautiful very quickly and simply.
CHAD: So what caused you to differentiate yourself based on design?
JENI: I think just personal preference and aesthetic, to be honest. As we were building the platform, I realized very quickly that people were choosing us...one of the big reasons people were choosing us was because of the simple nature of the user interface and because of the design that it produced. And so we decided really early to prioritize that. And I would say it's also just I care deeply about design, and I don't like the idea of using tools that make that an afterthought.
And so I thought if I'm going to use it, and I do, I mean, we definitely dogfood our own platform and teach our own courses, we run our own communities there, I want it to look beautiful. [laughs] I want it to be a place that people enjoy spending time. We all spend more time, I think, than we want looking at screens. And so when you are going to engage in that practice and engage with other people on the internet, I think it's really nice to do it in a space that feels welcoming, and gentle, and beautiful.
CHAD: So you have a co-founder, Sandy. Are either of you designers or have a background in design?
JENI: Nope, not at all. Although I was one course away from minoring in art history in school. [laughter] No, I'm a lawyer. So I'm the opposite of a designer, although I think there's a part of me that thinks of myself as an artist. I wish that were my identity.
CHAD: So, given the importance of design that you discovered, how did you go about executing on that?
JENI: Hiring really great people, I would say, and having a really critical eye. And so, there's a tremendous amount of feedback that goes into our process. And now we have a head of bran