{"id":7681,"date":"2025-06-04T23:25:42","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T06:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/?p=7681"},"modified":"2025-06-04T23:26:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T06:26:28","slug":"founders-parade-jason-richards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/2025\/06\/04\/founders-parade-jason-richards\/","title":{"rendered":"Founders Parade: Jason Richards – Minga"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Jason Richards<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Founder
Minga<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Minga is an educational technology platform focused on K-12 campus management. It aims to offer schools a safe and secure central platform from which they can send out communications, track attendance, provision digital school IDs and hall passes, and log student conduct. With this data, Minga helps schools reduce student tardiness, support behavioural interventions, and increase student engagement – all while avoiding the need to use multiple different platforms or manual processes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minga is not Jason’s first venture as a founder. In 2013, he exited his venture in networking technology when his company was successfully acquired. He has been a pillar of the startup and entrepreneurial community in the Okanagan, BC, through mentorship, advising, and other subsequent ventures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minga is a great example of a founder identifying a pain-point they encounter, and having the drive and vision necessary to establish a venture built around solving that problem. As a father, Jason encountered the discombobulated communication his children’s schools engaged in – paper announcements, phone messages, emails – and quickly realized he wasn’t alone in his frustration. Thus, he founded Minga. Through his leadership of the venture, Jason demonstrates clear entrepreneurial traits such as adaptability and responsiveness. Minga has refined its value proposition multiple times, and features are continuously evolving based on customer feedback. I worked for Minga briefly in 2020, and it was clear Jason had established strong relationships with school administrators and teachers, whose pain-points served as the guiding force for the product’s development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A perusal of Minga’s team on LinkedIn reveals a diverse mix of expertise spanning management, software development, customer support, and sales professionals. The team appears well-rounded for rapid expansion, with sales, support, and infrastructure all represented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I asked what makes him uniquely skilled to run a company like Minga, Jason quickly remarks that he isn\u2019t. Instead, he highlights what he believes are characteristics shared by all successful entrepreneurs: \u201can outlandish optimism and the social skills to convince a community around you of that outlandish optimism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpt from Victory Lap | A Conversation with Minga’s Jason Richards<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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For me, this analysis emphasizes the importance of responsiveness. Jason’s initial frustration with school communication may have been the initiating pain-point for the Minga venture, but from that point on it seems it was the client-base – teachers, principals, schools, districts – whose needs and feedback steered the product. The willingness to pivot, and the awareness to know when to do so, are essential entrepreneurial qualities. As a founder, I imagine it would be challenging to shift a venture away from its original direction, scrap product features one is passionate about, or make changes one doesn’t personally love. It’s easy to become attached to our creations! If I were ever to dive into entrepreneurship, I suspect I would be in a persistent struggle with the sunk-cost fallacy.For me, this analysis emphasizes the importance of responsiveness. Jason’s initial frustration with school communication may have been the initiating pain-point for the Minga venture, but from that point on it seems it was the client-base – teachers, principals, schools, districts – whose needs and feedback steered the product. The willingness to pivot, and the awareness to know when to do so, are essential entrepreneurial qualities. As a founder, I imagine it would be challenging to shift a venture away from its original direction, scrap product features one is passionate about, or make changes one doesn’t personally love. It’s easy to become attached to our creations! If I were ever to dive into entrepreneurship, I suspect I would struggle with sunk-cost fallacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victory Lap | A Conversation with Minga\u2019s Jason Richards<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Final 6 | Minga\u2019s Jason Richards<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelowna\u2019s Vineyard Networks Acquired for $28 Million<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LinkedIn<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Richards Founder Minga Minga is an educational technology platform focused on K-12 campus management. It aims to offer schools a safe and secure central…<\/p>\n

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