Aceable Founder & CEO Blake Garrett Interview Transcript
Clint Betts
Blake, thank you so much for coming on the show. It means a lot to have. You're the founder and CEO of Aceable. Tell us what that is and how you became the founder and CEO.
Blake Garrett
Yeah, so Aceable exists to unlock upward mobility by turning dull mandatory courses... think about the fact that 50 million Americans have to take a license or regulatory education a year, and that often stands between them and some dream they have. So started out sort of randomly, but in driver's ed, 50% of our driver's ed customers take a driver's ed course to get a license to be able to drive to their first job.
Or we have so many people that come to us to get a real estate license because it's one of the last jobs in our country where you can become a millionaire, and you might not even have a college degree. So it adds to this economic mobility that, for better or worse, a lot of regulators have put education as a barrier. And for years, really frankly, decades, for some reason, that meant the education had to frankly suck. And we saw this opportunity make it far more enjoyable, make it mobile, gamified, make it a lot more interesting, and therefore effective at helping people change their lives.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. That's so cool, man. So give us a sense of how long you've been doing it? Did you raise money?
Blake Garrett
Yeah.
Clint Betts
Where did you realize this was a huge need, too?
Blake Garrett
My story is probably a little non-traditional in the sense that I didn't have this tragic car accident in my life where I'm like, "I got to just disrupt how we teach kids to drive." It really became, ever since I was little, I wanted to start a business. Around 2012, I came across this great quote. I was 28 at the time; it's a quote by Gandhi: "Action expresses priority." And up to that point in my life, I was the friend... and Clint, I don't know, you're an entrepreneur, maybe you were this way for some period of your life where it'd be like, me and my buddies out at a bar on a Friday night and be like, "I got this idea, actually, you guys got to promise not to tell anyone before we go do it because it's just such a good idea." And three weeks later, I was off that idea, onto the next one, none of which I did anything with.
And so I had my corporate job working in management consulting, but I was like, "All right, are my actions truly indicative of this burning desire to start a business?" And up to that point, they weren't. So in 2012, I flipped a switch, said, "All right, I'm going to spend every waking moment that I control trying to start a business." And I went through so many God awful ideas, eventually stumbling across this idea of mobile-regulated education, things people had to learn, and a great user experience.
But it took from 2012 to 2014 when we launched our first product, so the first product was under what we do today. There are other launches that were poor. So 2014 is really when it launched. Since then, we've raised about $115 million. We'll break a hundred million in revenue this year. We are profitable. We really found product market fit, and then we really found a product that, every day, is just like counting the stories of how it's impacting people, which is so cool when you can find something that can make a lot of money and help a lot of people. It's what we've been able to do so far. So definitely wasn't an easy route as I go from 2014 to today and those stats, but it's been amazing.
Clint Betts
Did you raise money, or have you bootstrapped it, or how?
Blake Garrett
Oh no. So we raised money. We've raised about $115 million to date. A big chunk of that was a secondary round in 2020, but early on, bootstrapped it from for credit card debt, frankly, credit card debt went to friends that were dumb enough to invest a little bit that went to some angels in Austin to a VC round in 2015 and then we're through Series C at this point.
Clint Betts
Give me a sense for how you think about fundraising and raising money and exiting and all. Obviously, the goal is like, "Hey, let's get a fantastic exit for..." The goal of the VCs, not your goal. "Let's get a fantastic exit for our investors or go public. How are you thinking about all of this?"
Blake Garrett
So, I'd say it's like it's shifted on two different vectors now if I think back to 2025 versus 2020, or 2012, 2013, 2014, as maybe you've covered with other guests, I can build our first version of our product today. I am not a technician, I'm not an engineer.
Clint Betts
Right, that's nuts.
Blake Garrett
But today I can build it. In 2013, I couldn't build it. I needed to pay someone to build it. So I had to raise some level of capital just to purchase the capabilities to build the product and acquire the customers because I didn't have the skills necessary to do it any other way. So if I were starting today, my view on raising money would be totally different.
And then as far as our business now, since 2018, we've been profitable. We generate a bunch of cash every year. We don't need outside markets or outside investors to give us more cash to achieve our growth ambitions. So we're in a good spot. Now there's the public market, and frankly, I don't know if we're growing fast enough or have the need for that much capital at one time. I think we can go out from here on out, growing a really successful business, chasing our ambitions without an influx of eight or nine figures of capital because we have a really capital-efficient business. I don't know if that answers your question.
Clint Betts
No, yeah, of course. So give me a sense for how AI is changing everything, and how it's changing your business, and how you're implementing it now.
Blake Garrett
Yeah, it's fascinating. We're breaking across every department of our team. I've gone deep in the last really six to nine months to say, our product at the end of the day is text, images, video, voiceover, interactive games, which again, are just text for the most part. Some images, it's like generative AI is getting better and better at doing those things. Now, it's not as simple as going into Chat GPT and saying, "Give me an insurance licensing course." Which is our latest vertical? It's far more complex than that. But the possibilities of speeding up content creation while still having humans in the loop are a big opportunity there. On the marketing side, how do we create the assets necessary to go to market faster in a more intelligent way? Engineering, I've been a vibe coding engineer now. It's pretty fun. But the clock code is mind-blowing, absolutely mind-blowing.
So, what can it unlock with someone that's not technical? If you are technical and you harness it, are you a 10X engineer all of a sudden? And I think it's completely feasible with the learning curve that we're all adopting. What I hope is, and what I'm really trying to build our company towards, is amplifying our productivity. I would love to keep headcount right where it is and triple revenue. I'm not necessarily here looking like, "Okay, how do I half headcount?" I would rather go create the value on the top line than just go straight to the cost structure.
Clint Betts
Yeah, that's incredible. That's very cool. Give me a sense of what a typical day looks like for you as CEO and how you manage your life.
Blake Garrett
Yeah. Well, it all starts with a big portion of my life that is completely out of my control, and that I have a five-year-old, three-year-old, and one-year-old, and when they beckon, I'm there. So thankfully, in the mornings, my wife is able to spend time with them if they're getting up super early. So I'll try to work out around 6:00 AM, then from there, so I quickly start to get ready for camps in the summer, school during the year, get them fed, get them out the door to school, sometimes drop them off. Sometimes my wife does that. And then it's work till... and this has changed a lot in the last five and a half years.
Now it's like work till 5:00, 5:30, 5:30 is kind of pushing it, because it's get home, dinnertime, bath time, brush teeth, that whole routine. Every other night, my wife and I trade, which one of us is going to help them fall asleep? Because they still need us there to fall asleep. So then it's pretty much 8:00 PM and it's back to what I call the night shift of doing whatever I can from 8:00 to 11:00 to push forward whatever my most important things were to get done for that day that are not done at that point. Try to get seven-ish hours of sleep, back at it the next day.
Clint Betts
That's incredible, man. Give me a sense of how you've maintained culture within the company. Are you an all-remote team, a hybrid, or an all-in-person team? Give us a sense for that and how you've thought about the culture of the company, particularly as you've scaled over the past decade.
Blake Garrett
So today we are mostly hybrid. We still have probably the largest contingent in Austin, where we're based. We have a few satellite offices that we've picked up through some acquisitions that we've done. And then culture, I'd go back to 2014, we were just starting out. There are 12 of us. A good mentor of mine is like, "Hey, it seems like your culture is really good." And I'm like, "I'm just trying to make a product, man. I'm trying to stop burning money and make a little money and raise our next round." But I appreciate you saying that, and he's like, "Yeah, but the thing is, if you don't codify your culture, it might not stay good, and if you're just leaving it to chance, you might look up one day and realize you don't like your company." And he's like, "I really suggest you take some time to write down what you want in your culture."
So we did an exercise at that point around our values, established them, it might've been 2015 by the time we finished that, and then they've been in place since. And so those influence hiring decisions, firing decisions, everybody goes through, and values onboarding training that I teach, and it really shows up in who gets promoted, who gets rewarded, and who might lose opportunities. It shows up kind of like that Gandhi quote that I mentioned, through action. And I think there's a thread that runs with it, and I'm happy to talk about any of the seven values, but I'd just sum it up as kind, caring, and really ambitious people, and I think it's done a lot for us.
Clint Betts
That's incredible, man. Yeah, that's very cool. What do you read? Give me a sense of what you read and what reading recommendations you would have for our community here.
Blake Garrett
It's interesting, I was talking to somebody about this yesterday. Now that I'm legit addicted to vibe coding, I've been reading a lot less because I'm brushing my teeth and prompting cloud code on the next thing I need it to do. So my consumption of content has really become in the car, and then it tends to be audio. So there are some podcasts that I love in addition to yours, if that helps-
Clint Betts
Yeah, of course.
Blake Garrett
.... if that's the answer. And then I can hit on some of my favorite books that have been transformative for me. But I'd say from a podcast perspective, one that by Claire Vo, she used to be Austinite, now I think she's in the Bay Area but How I AI, it's great because it's super tactical, literal screen shares, this is what you do, this isn't philosophical, it's just like, here's some real tips that you can go do today to drive more efficiency and productivity in whatever your job is.
So that has been huge. The Founders podcast, I'm a big sucker for the entrepreneurial stories of those who have come before. David Senra is out of his mind, which he talks about all the time. So high energy. So that one's super cool. On the book front, there are a couple that have been helpful for me. I was recommended this book called Relentless Solution Focus, and it's by this guy named Jason Selk, who actually does performance coaching. And after I read it, I started working with him but attacks this problem that a lot of us have of as a problem emerges, obsessing on the problem or as the negative emotion emerges, you can start to spiral around the negative emotion and how do you really let yourself that for 60 seconds and then flip to, "All right, what's the next action I can take to go make this better?"
So that one's been super helpful, which is probably one that's not talked a whole lot about. Then some classics, High Output Management, Andy Grove, never gets old, can definitely put you to sleep if you're reading in bed late at night, but so many nuggets. And then I think the last one I'll say is just right now, I think it's super helpful, is The Goal, the book The Goal, the allegory about supply chain and how you think about constraints in a process. And I think with AI right now, we're at this point where if you really understand the constraints in your business to creating value and you attack those, you can unlock some really powerful growth.
Clint Betts
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I haven't even heard of that one, I'm going to have to check that one out. That's cool. That's very cool. How do you think about this age of artificial intelligence and vibe coding? And give us a sense of what your vibe code exactly is. Are you working on business things, just your own side things, or are you just trying to learn as much? Because you're right. Cloud coding is addicting, man. It's so much fun.
Blake Garrett
Yeah, it's both. So I have built this whole content dashboard where you can go in and we can create content from statute examples of Aceable content that we've used before. So how do we feed it through this automated process, but this one uses about eight to 10 different prompts at various stages in the life cycle. So I have a dashboard, you can log in, and I integrated it with Auth0, so it's protected. Last night I was working on how I need to implement cash, because I'm running into rate limits, all of these things that if I were asked to do these without cloud code, it would just be
Clint Betts
Yeah.
Blake Garrett
So, they're literal constraints in our business. How can I help us? And I think that the fascinating thing there has been, it's made me a lot better CEO because it's made me, A, now I understand what we're talking about. I understand what it's both great at, and I understand what it's not good at. I have a newfound empathy for engineers in QA that, yeah, the feature might take 20 minutes, but the regression testing, that's going to take a lot longer, and doing it on a code base from scratch versus doing it on a code base that, in our case, is 10 years old. Those are very different things. So it has created another level of empathy, but it also has created these guys who have zero engineering experience, and this is what I've created. You have decades of engineering experience. Yeah, I expect you to use these tools and find the best ways to apply them to your job while still being responsible engineers.
And I think it's also earned some respect on the other side. I didn't just read a blog post and ask about this or demand this, right? So it's been super helpful on that side, obviously, I could geek out about there. On the other side, last weekend I was at my mother-in-law's house. She's a librarian. She had to research some books that the library might purchase. I'm like, "Cool, let's make an app where you can input the topic and it has a bunch of prompts on the back end and it'll give you recommendations and a structured format and you can take it to your boss and be like, 'These are the ones we should buy.' And it took you three minutes to make, to generate." So my mother-in-law and I are geeking out on a Sunday vibe coding. It's pretty cool.
Clint Betts
That's incredible, dude, that's so cool. Give me a sense of your sales cycle. Is it different in the ed tech space than in others? Like how you're selling into companies, things like that?
Blake Garrett
Yeah, so we're mostly direct-to-consumer or direct-to-professional. So this will be like, Clint wants to stop paying real estate or realtors the three and six, so he's just going to go take a course, get a license, and save yourself some money. So we definitely have customers like that. Others, it's like, "Hey, I want to pivot into this career." Or whatever it might be. So it's about 90% direct to consumer, 10%, there will be businesses that buy for their constituents, or public schools will buy for their students, which has been cool to see too.
Clint Betts
Give me a sense for how you're thinking about the macroeconomic environment. Obviously, it was the rocky beginning of the year with tariffs and all that type of stuff. Did any of that affect you? Number one, and two, how are you thinking about it moving forward?
Blake Garrett
The macro, the biggest impact of macro on us so far, has been just the state of the real estate market. The fewer homes being sold, the less attractive it is as an industry to enter for a new career. So we've seen that there was a lawsuit, an antitrust lawsuit, a National Association of Realtors, which sort of just kept creating headlines around. This is not where you'd want to start a career.
So we've seen some of that start to subside, but really from an interest rates perspective, that one hits that part of our business, which is still fairly meaningful. But the good thing about that is, it literally is a cycle. There will be an upswing; it will be an attractive industry to enter into, and right now, you could argue that it is a great time to enter into it, and you get to ride that upswing. So that's the biggest macro thing. Macro doesn't impact driving too much. It's pretty stable regardless of what's going on in the world, aside from a month and a half blip with COVID, where you literally couldn't go get a driver's license because no DMVs or DPSs were open. So that was a thing, but for the most part, we're fairly insulated there.
Clint Betts
How's Austin doing as a tech hub and just overall?
Blake Garrett
Yeah, this is understanding your audience. There are articles. I think there was an article that came out a month ago. It's the death of, I don't know, it was some very negative article about Austin.
Clint Betts
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's why I asked. And it's never true the way they portray any of this stuff, right? Remember hotspots, I guess hotspot, yeah.
Blake Garrett
Right. This isn't the popular answer, but I don't really care.
Clint Betts
Okay.
Blake Garrett
Because I'm kind of like, "I got to go hit our numbers." I got three kids to raise. I'm going to control what we can control and save all this pontification for everyone else because we're still able to hire great talent. It's not hurting us there. When we needed it, we had the capital, and we got capital from outside of Austin. So it didn't really matter, and it's just, as I think about my mentality overall, it's like focus on what is important and most important for me to create a successful business. And it's not getting wrapped around the axle on comment boards with those types of topics.
Clint Betts
Yeah, that's very healthy. That's very smart. Finally, we end every interview with the same question, and that is, at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives are just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Blake Garrett
The list is so, so long. I'm going to give two fast, and I guess it's three by definition. My parents did everything to give me a life that they didn't have, and I would not be talking without that. And then in 2012, there was a partner at Capital Factory, which was the incubator that I was going through. This guy Bob Fabio is a legendary entrepreneur in Austin, and he heard what I was doing. It's not what we do today. He's like, "I don't know if your idea is any good, but something around mobile might make sense. And you know what? I like you and I think maybe you're going to figure this out, so I'll bet on you." And no one with that level of pedigree was willing to do that at that point. So he put his social capital out there, put his name out there, and it started opening doors, and with doors came more progress too. So forever grateful to Bob.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. Blake, thank you so much for coming on. Congratulations on everything you've built. Really, it's super impressive. And let's have you on again. That'd be fun.
Blake Garrett
That'd be awesome, Clint. Thank you. Thanks for doing what you do. It's really helpful for all of us.
Clint Betts
Oh, thanks, man. Appreciate it. Have a good one.
Edited for readability.