Let me provide you with a brief background story and how my mindset has evolved over the past 10 years.
In 2014, we founded Weeteam, a typical IT service company targeting all kinds of web / mobile development projects: from corporate websites, and e-commerce, to 3D animation and AR/VR projects. By early 2018, we had completed over 100 projects in various digital areas, some of which were quite innovative, including virtual reality and IoT for brands like Mazda, Adidas, Sodexo, etc.
I was absolutely fascinated by the diversity of domains in IT and how innovations could be applied. Each project was a new challenge, requiring me to immerse myself in something new: a new culture, a new ecosystem, new teams, and innovative approaches… And on the other hand, I was becoming professionally dispersed, concerned about lacking deep expertise in any specific sector.
This feeling of “dispersion” motivated me to search for a specific area where I could deepen and apply my skills acquired during years of outsourcing. A sector where I could utilize my expertise to develop a truly useful and innovative product for the market.
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to meet my first client Julien in the educational sector. He eventually became a co-founder of SkillzRun, through an LMS development project for his language school. Thanks to this experience, I subsequently began working on essential EducationalTech projects, such as interactive learning applications, apps for children/elderly, and people with disabilities, among others. Thus, my proficiency in digital learning began to overshadow other areas of expertise and led to the creation of SkillzRun, a mobile LMS in the EdTech field. It was a significant opportunity to innovate in the essential educational sector, which was somewhat ‘old school’ in terms of tech, at least at that time.
The issues in the LMS market we aimed to address with SkillzRun:
1. MOBILE FIRST: only a few LMS solutions had mobile versions.
2. USER-FRIENDLY: interfaces for students and teachers were quite complicated to understand.
3. MOTIVATION TO PROGRESS: the level of design and functionality was insufficient in terms of motivating users to learn.
4. CUSTOMISATION: people need to have the possibility to create their own applications with personalized learning paths.
So, our original idea was to develop an easy-to-use, customizable, user-friendly, and, importantly, MOBILE learning tool for various sectors: from linguistic school to corporate employee training. All the trends in EdTech, including Blended Learning, Micro-learning, Gamification, Flexibility, and modularity, as well as the integration of new technologies like AR, AI, and IoT should have been taken into account. And most importantly, the possibility to create an individual mobile learning app with custom design and personalized features for each client.
Building different products helped me to gain valuable innovative experience across a variety of areas and encouraged me to find focus on EdTech. After 7 years, I’m still fascinated by this sector, its social value, and a wide range of possibilities for implementing new technologies in the educational process to enhance students’ motivation.