In K-12 curriculum sales, timing is everything. Districts adopt new programs on specific cycles, and if a vendor doesn’t know when a district is evaluating, outreach is either too early, too late, or irrelevant.

That was the problem inquirED had been trying to solve for years.

inquirED creates inquiry-based social studies curricula, including Inquiry Journeys for grades K–5, helping schools build students’ content knowledge and critical thinking skills. But even with a strong product, the team needed a better way to know which districts were preparing to adopt new curriculum — and when to reach out.

For Jeanette Hardy Baum, who has led sales and marketing at inquirED for seven years, the need was clear. Her CEO had been asking the same “magic wand” question for years: if they could know which districts were adopting curriculum and when, they would know exactly where to focus.

The challenge: adoption intelligence that never scaled

Before Starbridge, inquirED tried to solve the problem manually.

The team paid a contracting agency to call districts and gather adoption intel. SDRs tried to keep CRM fields updated on top of their normal workload. For high-priority accounts, someone would manually search through board documents, hoping to find a relevant curriculum discussion.

None of it scaled, and the CRM still didn’t reflect reality.

inquirED also experimented with early AI research tools to piece together adoption data on its own. But the process was still too manual, too inconsistent, and too hard to maintain.

Then the team found Starbridge and asked a direct question: could it help identify district curriculum adoption timelines?

The answer was yes.

Over time, the data became reliable enough for inquirED to import directly into HubSpot, turning a problem the company had been chasing for years into a usable system.

“We literally have more adoption information than we know what to do with in our CRM,” Jeanette said.

From inbound-led to account-driven

Starbridge also arrived at the right strategic moment.

inquirED had historically built its go-to-market motion around inbound contacts. Around the time the team adopted Starbridge, sales and marketing were shifting toward a more account-driven approach.

Starbridge gave that motion the intelligence it needed: current district adoption data, relevant buying signals, and clear reasoning behind each opportunity. Instead of relying on generic account lists or outdated CRM fields, the team could see which districts were more likely to be in-market and why.

That changed the SDR workflow. Reps now use their Starbridge feed as a daily habit, reviewing surfaced opportunities and acting on the context behind them.

For Jeanette, the reasoning matters as much as the signal itself. Starbridge doesn’t just flag a district; it explains why that district is relevant, giving reps confidence in the outreach.

The results: $200K in new pipeline in one quarter

In its first quarter using Starbridge, inquirED generated $200k in new pipeline, and went from having no reliable adoption database to having current adoption information on more than 1,000 districts in HubSpot.

That gave the team a stronger foundation for account-based selling. Instead of guessing which districts might be evaluating curriculum, inquirED can now prioritize accounts based on real adoption signals and focus outreach where timing and need are better aligned.

Jeanette’s advice to other K-12 companies is simple: don’t waste months trying to build this yourself if the right data already exists.

“I think it’s a great idea to try tools and see if they work for you,” Jeanette said. “If a tool exists and you try it and the data is good, just run with it. Don’t try to build your own thing.”

For inquirED, Starbridge turned curriculum adoption timing from a long-standing blind spot into a daily GTM advantage — helping the team focus on the right districts, at the right moment, with the right context.