Eight Questions // Hudson Baird

Hudson is the Co-Founder and CEO of PelotonU.

Praxis
The Praxis Journal

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Together with his co-founder Sarah Saxton-Frump, Hudson leads PelotonU, which has reinvented college for the working adults who comprise over half of today’s students by leveraging the flexibility of online universities with the support of in-person coaching. Founded in Austin, PelotonU has served 150 students who have earned 43 degrees, all while maintaining an 80% persistence rate with 90% of students on-pace to graduate on time.

Hudson and Sarah are Praxis Fellows from the Nonprofit Accelerator, 2018. Learn more about their work, and see their pitch at the Praxis Finale, here.

Hudson Baird answers questions during a reception at the Nonprofit Finale event, Miami, September 2018.

1. Who’s in your Hall of Fame for entrepreneurs, and why?

Those who turned down their big chance. The women and men who could have had their dream career, and instead chose something seemingly smaller — community, commitment, or family.

2. At Praxis we say that as entrepreneurs, “We create from love.” Who are you loving through your venture?

Myself, in some way. Both my insecurity and desire to point to something that says I matter, and my God-given desire to create spaces of belonging and hope (rooted in always not quite feeling I have that).

Beyond that: we’re serving folks who feel stuck and giving them hope. Recently, I’ve begun to realize that it’s not only directional opportunity (in terms of economic mobility) that we’re providing, but also horizontal. We’re creating places of diversity and strength where folks carry each others’ burdens — and that’s pretty cool.

3. What’s the most important thing you looked for in hiring employees 2–4?

Values and ownership. They need to have already demonstrated an investment in mentorship and displays of unexpected empathy.

From the ownership side, startups are resource-constrained — and no place more than cognitively. We needed to hire people to think about important things and trust that they’d own the problem instead of the process we gave them.

4. Entrepreneurs are always prototyping. What are you prototyping right now in your venture?

Gosh, all sorts of stuff. We’re looking for economic efficiencies by testing student case loads, remote coaching, and the subtleties of the study space and coaching relationship to focus our spend on what matters to students. To that end, we’re adding a design researcher to our board to ensure this customer-centricity is at the core of our strategy.

Programmatically, we really want to serve single parents, and are testing a collaborative childcare approach to better support them.

5. You’re asked to anchor an expert panel at the next Praxis Summit on a topic that has nothing to do with your venture or industry. What topic do you choose?

Poetry.

Oooooh, or the Red Sox World Series run. So that was all about role players, and if you think about who William Pitt was to Wilberforce, Buckley was to Reagan, or Melanchthon was to Luther — there’s a crucial need for the less-remembered role that I’d argue is indispensable. I’d appreciate being forced to decide what I think about that.

6. Never mind the Enneagram: Chaos Muppet or Order Muppet?

Isn’t the point of the article that we can’t really name ourselves? I’ll defer to you or Sarah.

[Editor’s note: We think Hudson is a Stealth Chaos Muppet in the disguise of an Order Muppet.]

[Sarah Saxton-Frump’s note: Confirmed. Stealth Chaos Muppet in the plaid disguise of an Order Muppet. Proof points include: propensity for risky outdoor adventures, prepping everything in the final hours, and always — always — doing the driving.]

7. In “Essentialism” Greg McKeown talks about choosing what problem you want:

A nonessentialist approaches every trade-off by asking, ‘How can I do both?’ Essentialists ask the tougher but ultimately more liberating question, ‘Which problem do I want?’

So: what problem are you glad you get to work on right now?

I told someone else this recently, and it felt true:

“One thing I keep being struck by (visible in politics and education, but not limited to those arenas) is how there’s an insider language that folks use to gauge fealty to their closely held worldviews. Much of the multiculturalism and (at times appropriate) pushback seems to be from a breakdown in terminology that can be shared. I’m hopeful that some of the role I can play is to speak to both sides about the important and deeply held values from the “other” but in language that’s familiar.

I’ve tried to find ways to speak to Beto voters about Cruz values in Beto language, and vice versa, if that makes any sense. I guess I still believe the ties and values that bind us all together as Americans are so much stronger than the discourse that keeps too many folks apart right now.”

8. #sabbathbrag: What do you do to rest?

Bought a typewriter and been lugging it around to places to write. But mostly, been nerding out to Gregory Boyle and mulling on his idea of kinship. I think it’s radical, especially for nonprofits.

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