An Update from the Nectir Team

Hi everyone - thanks for checking in for our quarterly update! This is a chance for us to be candid with you and tell you about our recent successes, struggles, and just some general updates. Our team at Nectir aims to be as transparent as possible with you all because we owe it to you. Without you, we wouldn't be here doing what we love most, so we appreciate your support and understanding as we grow our company and build you the best product possible.

You don't need us to tell you that the world has been a crazy place to live in for the past few months. We hope you're all staying safe at home, and that you're finding ways to relax in the midst of the chaos. It goes without saying that the higher education system in America has had to make some swift and sweeping changes to accommodate classes going remote. In a time of such isolation, the one thing we can do to help is to improve communication in every way possible. If we can use technology to mimic in-person conversations and communities, we believe we can help bridge the gap between the physical and online classroom. That's been the goal at Nectir since day one in April 2018, but the need for this type of technology is more relevant now than ever before. While we can't make everything the same as before, we still have to try to give students as much value as possible from their educational experiences this term, both in and out of classes. College is so much more than just lectures and midterms; it's about friends, clubs, campus resources and communities.

The goal of providing Nectir to a school, regardless of the circumstances of the world, is to connect students to their campus in a way that has never been done before. Students deserve to have every tool available to them to create the higher education experience that they need to progress in life. By allowing them to have and build avenues to communicate with their peers and instructors, we can give them the full support they've always needed. We're working hard behind the scenes at Nectir to make sure that our technology can handle this kind of multi-faceted communication. We don't always get it right, and we'll be the first to admit that, but we're working every day to make it better for you. Recently, at UC Santa Barbara, we faced some growing pains as we had to scale from 5,000 students to 15,000 almost overnight. With a team of less than 10, we've spent the last three weeks building the most secure, robust infrastructure to be able to hold as many conversations, file uploads, discussions, and communities as possible. After a week and a half of intermittent server issues, we've finally resolved them all and can move forward confidently. We know it's frustrating to have your services interrupted, so we are beyond thankful to everyone who has stuck by us while we navigate these new waters.

Beyond fixing our server issues, we've committed ourselves to improving and adding as many helpful tools and apps as we can in the next few months to make your time on Nectir as valuable as possible. Our customer service chat lines are on all week, ready to help you figure out how to make a poll, create a discussion, or even just to hear your critiques about the platform. From deleting/editing your own message to a better notifications, we hear your concerns and we promise we're working as fast as we can to give you the solutions you're looking for. If you ever have a feature suggestion or just want to vent about the issues you're having in your class, our DM's are always open.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for trusting us to help you make this time just a bit easier. We promise that we will never stop working hard to make Nectir the best ed-tech tool out there.

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Stay safe and healthy,

Jordan and Kavitta

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