Keeping Up With Edventures: December 2024

Photo by Alexander Zahari

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Dear Edventures community,

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas, if you’re celebrating it, and a happy New Year. We definitely had a great ending to 2024, finally securing a great Product Designer, as well as progressing in our process to find our next AI Engineer. We also made advancements with the platform in terms of stability of necessary functions and features that we noticed hadn’t been properly fixed earlier this year. All this put together, we feel like we’re in a great position to start the new year hot out the gates!

If you’re just getting to know us, here’s a quick recap

Whether it’s your first or hundredth newsletter, I’m so happy you’re reading this newsletter and that you want to follow us on our journey towards becoming the global leader in entrepreneurship support, democratising entrepreneurship education and learning for all. You’re receiving this newsletter because we’ve been in touch for the past weeks, months or maybe years, and because your interest, skills, experience and/or professional focus aligns with our mission and values.

For those who are new subscribers, or to give you a quick recap, Edventures is an edtech and future-of-work startup based out of Sweden. Our mission is to develop a leading AI platform that provides personalised coaching and learning experiences tailored to each entrepreneur’s specific business idea, needs, goals, and challenges. Additionally, our platform supports entrepreneurship organisations, coaches, and educators who play pivotal roles in supporting aspiring entrepreneurs.

Read on to discover this month’s latest updates and milestones. If you’re in a rush, below are the highlights you need to know about from last month.

TL;DR

• Aadarsh extending his stay with us and has proven himself to be a core member of the team
• We found our next Product Designer, Cheryl, and closed the recruitment process for this role
• Started to look for new AI Engineer as we reached an agreement with Zhen Hong to go separate ways
• It’s been brewing for a few months, but now it’s confirmed that we’ll be featured in the next GEM Global Report 2024/25 which will be released on 18th Feb
• We were also featured in the Eureka December newsletter, reflecting on the Web Summit delegation
• We finalised and submitted our application to the Social Tides Grow AI Accelerator
• Also submitted an application to the START category of the Startup Qatar Investment Program, an initiative by the Qatar Development Bank that we connected with at Web Summit

December: A Fresh Face, Pilot Prep, and Great Positioning for 2025

📣 Team News

As I woke up on Christmas Eve morning and checked my emails, I came across what I believe was the best Christmas gift this year: an email from a candidate for our Product Designer role, happily accepting our offer and expressing her excitement to join our team.

We’re excited to welcome Cheryl to the Edventures team as our new Product Designer! Cheryl brings an impressive combination of technical expertise, creative design skills, and entrepreneurial experience that will be invaluable in shaping the experiences we deliver to our users. Cheryl holds a double major in Computer Science and Economics from Duke University, combining her strong analytical skills with a passion for creative problem-solving.

She has a good eye for design and has previously worked on designs ranging from a hospitality management app to redesigning research websites. Cheryl also brings first-hand, entrepreneurial experience to our team as a co-founder of a music booking agency where she led branding efforts and crafted marketing strategies. Her first-hand experience of building a venture from the ground up resonates deeply with our mission of supporting young innovators and entrepreneurs, and her understanding of the challenges of entrepreneurs brings much needed empathy to her work.

On the technical front, Cheryl has a solid background, having spent time at AWS where she developed various features for machine learning training platforms and scheduling systems, and at Fidelity Investments, where she built features to automate unit testing. Her skill set spans Figma, HTML, CSS, React, Python, and after joining us, soon also Flutter—tools and technologies that will drive the development of engaging and effective products for Edventures.

To top it all off, Cheryl shares a passion for our vision of creating tools that support and inspire entrepreneurs, and she’s eager to contribute her unique mix of creative and technical expertise to our mission. As Cheryl herself put it:

“Empowering creators and innovators is something I’m incredible passionate about. From my experience working at both large companies and small startups, I’ve recognized my love for working on impactful projects with small teams. Also, I have had several coworkers leave their corporate jobs to start a project/business of their own, which was deeply inspiring. However, I feel that entrepreneurship should not be be limited to a select group and I am excited for this opportunity to build something that democratizes entrepreneurship and learning to wider audiences.”

We’re very excited to welcome Cheryl as we continue on our mission of making entrepreneurship accessible to everyone!

While welcoming Cheryl to the team, we’re also saying goodbye to Zhen Hong who had a very short spell here. Unfortunately, Zhen Hong was unable to commit the level of time and focus that we need and require to move our product forward and also to keep a good balance of commitment within the team. We gave it a chance, but ultimately, it wasn’t the right fit. After open and honest discussions, we mutually agreed to part ways, and we wish Zhen Hong all the best in his future endeavours.

⚙️ Product Evolvement

In December, we’ve simply focused our energy on making sure functionality and UI is consistent, working, and bug-free. From past demos and test runs, we’ve noticed some parts of the app, the “hidden corners”, hadn’t been fixed properly to work in a way that they’re intended to do. Ahead of our upcoming pilot, starting in January, we’ve spent extra time and attention to make sure we’ve thoroughly tested and fixed all the user flows and features currently existing in the app. We still have some fine-tuning left to do in early January, but all in all we’re getting more ready to launch the pilot by mid January.

🗞️ Edventures in the Media

We had the pleasure of being featured in the Eureka newsletter for December, which reflected on the Web Summit delegation of which we were a part.

Speaking of Edventures getting featured, we have an article coming up in February. Since the earliest days of Edventures, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) has been a trusted source of high-quality research and insights into the entrepreneurial ecosystems of over 50 of the world’s most influential economies. As a long-time subscriber to their newsletter, I came across an outreach many months ago to recommend entrepreneurs for featuring in their upcoming report. Without hesitation, I submitted my interest. To my delight, I soon received a response from GEM’s communications department, requesting more details about me and Edventures. Fast forward to December last year (yes, it’s 2025 now!), and I had the pleasure of reviewing and approving the proofread draft of a one-page article about me and Edventures, set to be featured in the GEM 2024/25 global report.

💰 Funding Opportunities

If you read our previous edition of Keeping Up With Edventures, you probably remember that we started working on an application for Social Tides Grow AI Accelerator, which we finalised and submitted in December. For those unfamiliar, Social Tides is an initiative funded by Google.org as part of the their Social Innovation Fund, and aims to address critical barriers to entry—such as access to funding, skills, and networks—that often prevent aspiring entrepreneurs and social enterprises from turning their ideas into impactful solutions, with a special focus on solving challenges aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. The deadline for the accelerator was on 16 December, and we’ll have a definite answer from them on our application by the end of February.

Shortly after submitting the application to Social Tides, we also submitted an application to the START category of the Startup Qatar Investment Program, an initiative by the Qatar Development Bank that we learned about at Web Summit. This programme is designed to support innovative startups with funding, mentorship, and resources to scale their ventures and make a tangible impact. We see this as a fantastic opportunity to strengthen Edventures and expand our reach, particularly in addressing youth entrepreneurship challenges on a global scale. We’re expecting to hear back from them in early 2025.

What’s in the pipeline for next month?

• January will see the launch of our first, paid pilot project with JA Philippines, an organisation we’ve been in talks with during autumn last year (yes, it really is 2025 now!). Meetings are planned in early Jan to hash out details about the pilot and it’s planned to launch in mid Jan, running until the end of March.

• We’re opening some new talks with potential customers, and we’ll also rekindle previous conversations about pilot projects from last year, with orgs that we have established a connection with, but not yet finalised pilots with.

• Our search for our next AI Engineer will hopefully be concluded in January, and thus fully cementing the Edventures team of four. We currently have a handful of very qualified and promising candidates.

Get the latest updates about our progress straight to your inbox by making sure you sign up for our newsletter, and be among the first to test our prototype by joining our Earlybird Community!

On that note, I want to wrap this month’s newsletter by thanking you for your continued support, and I look forward to sharing more updates with you next month.

Stay foolish, stay ambitious!

Alexander and the Edventures team