Madhu Vohra: CEO and Founder of dabbL, Madhu Vohra is a seasoned software engineering leader with extensive experience in both technical and management roles. Before embarking on her journey as a founder, she served as Director of Engineering leading enterprise scale charters and large cross geo teams at brand name companies like VMware and Nutanix. Known for her commitment to customer delight, execution, and talent development, Madhu’s passion for technology and innovation has defined her career, consistently driving advancements in software solutions that enhance customer satisfaction and fuel organizational growth.
Sirisha Kaipa: CTO and Founder of dabbL. Sirisha is a dynamic tech leader with over two decades of experience in creating state-of-the-art, market-leading products. Known for her strengths in ideation, innovation, and team-building, she has consistently fostered strong, motivated teams with a cohesive drive toward excellence. In her leadership roles, Sirisha actively engages in agile methodologies, embracing scrum processes to support her teams in reaching shared objectives. Her work has always emphasized innovation and customer satisfaction, leading her teams to excel in delivering solutions that meet and exceed market demands.
Before co-founding dabbL, Sirisha held several impactful roles, including a strategic leadership position at Dell EMC and software engineering roles at LinkedIn. She also dedicated nine years to Veritas Software, advancing to the role of Senior Principal Software Engineer. Her career is marked by a steadfast commitment to both product excellence and fostering team environments where creativity and customer-focused innovation thrive.
1. Tell us about your company and the problem it solves, or its benefit to learners or educators.
Madhu> The college admissions landscape is getting increasingly challenging with each passing year, however access to affordable and personalized college counseling continues to be a challenge. dabbL is an AI-powered college and career guidance platform for high school students.
dabbL democratizes access to high quality college and career by providing AI powered college and career recommendations tailored to what students are interested in. Flipping the approach, we start with careers that match the student’s interests, majors that align with the potential careers, colleges specializing in those majors that also match your college preferences. Then we help students create a high school plan to achieve it, iteratively! And all of this with your support network – friends, alumni, parents and counselors!
Sirisha> dabbL is our attempt to help high school students translate their passion into careers. We are about finding that seed of motivation in students to help them to identify and define their north star. Schools are battling chronic absenteeism and lack of motivation in students. We believe that to truly move the needle in the right direction, we need a new approach – to help students find that motivation, to own what’s next for them.
With dabbL, Madhu and I are bringing this ability to define goals based on their intrinsic interests to all students, no matter their background, GPA, or socio-economic status.
2. Where did the idea come from to create your company?
Madhu> Our journey started from our own personal experiences with our kids. I have raised 2 kids in two different states, my daughter did her high school in North Carolina in 2016, and my son was in California, class of 2023. Very different ways to apply to college, also noticed the process getting increasingly hard and the guidance continued to be VERY limited regardless of whether it was a private or a public school!
Sirisha> I was frustrated with the college application process and the toll it took on my child. Talking with my long time friend Madhu, I just vented out all that was boiling in my mind. She calmly asked me if I wanted to do something to change that, and I readily accepted and dabbL began to ideate. I never even dreamed of starting a company, imagine my utter surprise when she sent me an 8-page business plan the next day! I was incredulous at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to be the right step. We met at a local coffee shop, and that was where dabbL was born.
3. Tell us about one challenge and how you overcame that challenge.
Madhu> As any software engineering leader will tell you, there always are challenges. However nothing compares in scale to the journey I am on with dabbL. When we thought we knew what our customers wanted, we learnt that was the tip of the iceberg! And when we thought building was the hardest challenge, came GTM 🙂 Have we overcome that challenge? Not yet, but we are learning everyday, and learning fast. Our product is loved by everyone who uses it, however making counselors understand this is not replacing them, but is a tool in their toolbelt, positioning dabbL as a trusted friend and buddy for both students and counselors is is the journey we are on, and learning from all sources possible – our mentors, customers and seasoned leaders who have led this space before us. Huge gratitude and thanks to everyone who has helped us in this journey!
Sirisha> Building a startup is already a huge challenge! We had to start with the basics and the YC startup school was a great beginning. My husband is a founder too, and he was and continues to be a great mentor to us.
One challenge we faced early on was in developing our go-to-market (GTM) strategy. We are building something that is so essential for student success, and we were so sure high schools will readily adopt dabbL. We were in for a rude surprise: administrators and counselors are always happy to talk as long as we don’t bring price into the discussion. GTM EdTech is fraught with its own constraints: slow sales cycles and unpredictable and seasonal school budgets. We reached out to mentors in the Blue Startups accelerator, and mentors in the EdTech space and we think we have a strategy that will work. Of course, experience is the definitive teacher. We now know to learn, to adapt as we go. We’re looking forward to getting dabbL in the hands or more students, administrators, counselors, and parents.
4. What are you most proud of or what is your company’s greatest achievement?
Madhu> We are just starting, and we still have ways to go. However, a couple things – as a 2024 TechCrunch Battlefield company, we had a booth at TecCrunch. When your booth is getting a lot of visitors, and almost everyone who stops by your booth says something in line with “I wish I had this when I was in school” – I consider that a win! That makes me proud of the fact that dabbL is truly solving a deep pain that our society has grown to just “deal with” because there is no alternative. The second is when counselors tell us – these are all the colleges or majors I recommend to my students, proof and validation of dabbL’s capabilities is what makes me proud!
Sirisha> I am torn between when we hit our first 100 users and when dabbL generated the list of colleges for my son, and it was almost a full match for what he applied to, even including the classification of colleges! That was literally “proof in the pudding!” for us I am certain there will be many more such aha moments for Madhu and I as we continue our journey with dabbL.
5. Where do you see your company in five years?
Madhu> I see dabbL as “the” platform for all students to get all career and college guidance. In the next 5 years we envision US students, both high school and beyond, finding their college and career fit, students from countries like India and China looking for education opportunities in the US, Canada, Australia to be able to do all their research on dabbL. We also envision dabbL as the platform where colleges will find their prospective students, employers will find their new college grads, and young professionals will find their next opportunity – all fit based!
Sirisha> We definitely have big, hairy, audacious goals for dabbL. Imagine if you will, a flywheel of pay-it-forward following a student as they work towards their career pathways through high school, college and into the workforce. At each step of the way, dabbL-ers can help other dabbL-ers on their career journeys. The near-peer guidance that dabbL can give to students and early career professionals is something that is not available on any platform today! And the icing on the cake is that dabbL-ers can stay connected with advisors, mentors and even their alma mater throughout their career journeys – it’s a win-win-win, for the students, their alma mater and dabbL! What’s not to love about that? 🙂
