ExperimentFirst
Unit of Wheelhouse Venture Partners
Quim Sabria
Co-Founder, EdPuzzle, Spain
Problem: There is huge amount of e-learning content (from likes of Khan Academy/ Youtube). However, many teachers don’t use the content, partly because they are unable to customise it for their own needs.
Solution: An easy to use tool for teachers to personalise existing e-learning content for the needs of their students by add their own voice, framing, in video questions
$100K
funding in 2 months
Pivot 3 times in 2 months, validated minimum viable product
Accepted into ImagineK12 in Silicon Valley
Challenges
“Faced with a classroom problem of differentiation, I decided to create videos to teach basic concepts in Catalan. I decided to share this project with the rest of my colleagues. None of them used it more than one session. It was a failure. What's worse, is that I was failing to realise it's a failure and changing my approach fast”
‘After my first failure, I was on the verge of giving up. My project was not good enough and I was considering a number of alternative career paths like working for another tech company (even had interviews). “
Journey
“Zevae M. Zaheer was the first person that made me understand I was failing in my idea of innovation. In our first virtual meeting, I tried to explain to him my project: a Catalan version of Khan Academy. “
“Introducing me to a network of teachers working on similar problems from different perspectives: Co.Creator introduced me to Martins Kalis (Mission Possible ’09) and Bruno Reddy (Teach First ’04), two teachers that have experience in blended learning. With so many questions, Co.Creator decided it was the moment to visit Bruno’s Classroom in order to organize my ideas. By then, blended learning was just an idea, something I had read about on the Internet. In a cold London morning, I understood what it really meant. After watching with my own eyes what I wanted to achieve with my students, I realized Mr. Reddy (how students refer to Bruno) was teaching me something really important: blended learning is about connecting with your students.”
“Pushed by Co.Creator to apply to the Y-combinator of educator, Imagine K12, we started to build the idea and the business plan. Two weeks of hard work with Co.Creator interviews for us with Sam Chaudary (CEO Class Dojo), Gabriela Netter (Teach For America alumna in Rocketship), Justin Matthys (Teach for Australia Fellow) and prepare a survey for more than 30 teachers around the world.”
"It is going so fast, I can't believe we were just discussing the idea of innovation and today I was discussing with Mitch Kapor our Business Model. This wouldn't be possible without your help."