Keeping Up With Edventures: April 2024

Photo by Kazuend on Unsplash

This blog post was originally sent out via our newsletter last week. If you want earlier updates about our progress straight to your inbox and be among the first to test our prototype, join our Earlybird Community and make sure you sign up for our newsletter!

Dear Edventures community,

Continuing our catch-up of the monthly updates, we’ve reached April, a period of rejuvenation and growth, beautifully pictured through the ‘sakura’, cherry blossoms, in Japan. Just like spring, Edventures underwent significant changes—old elements have been replaced, and new initiatives have blossomed, breathing fresh life into our journey.

April: Releasing Franklin, a new backend, and changes in the team

First of all, I’m thrilled to announce the successful launch of our second feature, Franklin. Designed for coaches, teachers, and anyone supporting entrepreneurs, Franklin enhances the management and support of entrepreneurs through detailed, customisable insights and analytics. This powerful tool provides valuable performance metrics, enabling more effective guidance. Franklin, in combination with Anna (our conversational AI for entrepreneurs), is a crucial component of our Minimum Sellable Product (MSP), as it significantly increases the overall value for organisations and position us to successfully carry out our upcoming pilot projects.

In a strategic move to optimise our backend infrastructure, we have transitioned from Appwrite to Django, as the Appwrite backend was hindering our ability to implement updates efficiently. This change, though challenging, was necessary to ensure smooth data retrieval for our AI and improve the modularity of our system and codebase. Simultaneously, we focused on optimising both entrepreneur and coach screens for mobile use, ensuring that our web application is responsive and functions seamlessly on any device. Now, both Anna and Franklin are fully mobile-friendly, enhancing accessibility and usability on the go.

We continued our discussions with potential Junior Achievement pilot project partners from March, with India, Malaysia, and South Africa, while during April we initiated discussions with additional customers in Zambia, the Philippines, Kenya, and Malta, with hopes to include Indonesia soon.

There have been some changes to the team, and I’m happy to share that Abreham is excelling in his role, and very quickly (and naturally) has grown into a Lead Engineer role for us. His 360 understanding and approach, dedication, speed, and expertise have been invaluable to our progress, and I’m super excited to see what we can achieve together in the coming months.

Additionally, we’re thrilled to welcome our new AI Engineer, Chukwudi. Chukwudi graduated in the UK with a MSc in Big Data Technology in 2022, and has 3+ years of experience working as a software engineer and data scientist, most recently at Faculty AI where he engineered bespoke LLM-powered applications. He’s a recipient of the highly competitive Faculty AI Fellowship which gives the brightest PhD and master’s graduates, as well as postdoctoral researchers in STEM the skills needed to progress from academia into data science jobs. Chukwudi’s upbringing in northern Nigeria instilled in him a strong passion for entrepreneurship by his active involvement in expanding and supporting the family’s respected livestock enterprise in the northern parts of the country, and his unique blend of technical expertise and entrepreneurial spirit will undoubtedly enhance our team, on our journey to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs.

However, like spring, with rejuvenation comes changes. Anza and Taha have decided to move on from Edventures due to their limited ability to fully commit to the increasing demands of our journey. While we will miss them, this change allows us to level up our team and bring on members who are more motivated and able to commit to our mission and vision. Our Product Designer, Catie, has also left to pursue a role with a fintech company, which aligns perfectly with her background as a CFA. We’re very grateful for their contributions to the Edventures journey, and wish all three of them the very best in their new endeavours!

In April, we received feedback on many of our pending applications, and while we did not proceed with Sequoia Arc, Mastercard Strive EU Innovation Fund, McCain Global Leaders, XO Foundation, and Forum Ventures, we remain undeterred. Honestly, I view these outcomes not as permanent “no’s” but as “not yet’s”, and we still have pending applications to hear from and new opportunities to pursue in May.

What’s in the pipeline for next month?

For May, we continued our discussions with potential partners, although they were delayed due to team changes and necessary technical improvements. We also launched an outreach campaign targeting over 600 deans and principals of Swedish upper secondary schools that offer the JA company programme. Alex attended the EU-Startups Summit in Malta on 9-10 May to meet with Edtech investors, angel investors, and other interesting startup people from all over Europe (and some even outside of Europe). Our team focused on improving both the backend and frontend of our app, and we were excited to onboard our new AI engineer, Chukwudi. We submitted applications for the PMF Method by First Round Ventures, Halcyon EquityTech Fellowship, the Nordic Innocation House Fellowship by Vinnova, and to the Eureka Investment Readiness Programme delegations to Web Summit in Lisbon, as well as Switch in Singapore.

Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to sharing more updates with you soon. Here’s to a promising and entrepreneurial 2024!

Stay foolish, stay ambitious! Alexander and the Edventures team

If you are just getting to know us

At Edventures, we champion progress. Our mantra is ‘keep moving forward’ and we want to embody this mantra in our app, to simplify your entrepreneurial journey. It’s as simple as texting. Let’s keep moving forward, together.

PS. This blog post was originally sent out via our newsletter last week. If you want earlier updates about our progress straight to your inbox and be among the first to test our prototype, join our Earlybird Community and make sure you sign up for our newsletter! 📝