Keeping Up With Edventures: June 2024

Photo by Alexander Zahari

This blog post was originally sent out via our newsletter and publsihed on LinkedIn 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,

As we enter July, while the rest of Europe enjoys proper summer weather, here in Scandinavia we’re experiencing a mix of daily showers and intermittent sunshine. This feels symbolic, as it’s been a mix of showers and sunshine in June for Edventures. Let me walk you through it.

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 align with our mission and values.

For those who are new, Edventures is an edtech and future-of-work startup based out of Sweden but with a fully remote and international team, spanning two continents. Our mission is to develop a cutting-edge conversational AI that provides personalised coaching and learning experiences tailored to each entrepreneur’s specific business idea, needs, and challenges. Additionally, our platform supports entrepreneurship organisations, coaches, and educators who play pivotal roles in nurturing aspiring entrepreneurs.

Read on to discover this month’s latest updates and milestones, and stay tuned for the exciting journey ahead!

Best,

Alexander Zahari

Founder and Product Visionary

TL;DR

• Complete AI system overhaul led by Chukwudi, enhancing user experience and capabilities.
• Improved BMC and brainstorming paths, ensuring tailored support and smooth transitions in the chat.
• Started to integrate the Socratic method for deeper engagement and critical thinking.
• Implemented admin features and BMC PDF downloads.
• Enhanced Android compatibility, UI fixes, and design consistency across devices and platforms.
• Attended Future Talent Summit in Stockholm, opened up for additional potential pilots.
• Selected for Eureka Investment Readiness Programme delegation to Web Summit in November.
• Encouraging feedback from SuperCharger Ventures despite not being selected; aiming for future cohorts.
• Positive interactions with JA programme schools in Sweden, planning pilot projects for August.
• Postponed Product Designer hiring to August for a better fit; commitment and passion remain priorities.

June: significant AI advancements, Stockholm conference, and finding our footing

Although the revamp of our AI started late in May, throughout all of June we have worked tirelessly to construct and finetune our new AI backend, led by Chukwudi, to make the conversations smoother and more natural. During the last week of June, we successfully tested an update that made us take several steps forward in terms of our AI capabilities and user experience.

As part of our ongoing efforts to rebuild and enhance our AI, we’ve made great progress across several key areas. Chukwudi laid the foundation of a new AI backend and conversation model designed for our needs, blending our own prompt engineering and system design. We’ve tested a lot of different paid and open-source models and frameworks to find what suits our needs best, while we’ve also been strategising around our own AI infrastructure.

When entrepreneurs sign up on our app, they choose between two paths: starting a business project using the Business Model Canvas (BMC) or brainstorming new business ideas. If they have an idea, they can dive straight into their business project, and if not, we guide them through a business idea generation process. Building something for this purpose was a challenge, but we managed to implement a model inference to validate user input and provide tailored responses in a smooth and natural-sounding way, making sure users get effective support whether they are launching projects or want to spawn business ideas. Chukwudi has done quite a lot of testing to minimise the risk of inaccuracies, so-called “hallucinations”, for example with specific token limits and temperatures set for different tasks.

Whether users start a business project or brainstorm business ideas, they can seamlessly switch between conversations within the same chat interface. We’ve focused on ensuring user input meet BMC and brainstorming requirements, allowing us to gather data and context to personalise the user experience in a relevant and valuable way. Our model now also considers conversation history, ensuring a coherent and continuous dialogue. To put this in perspective: most free language models, like ChatGPT, have strict limitations on keeping conversation history in memory, making them lose out on context. Additionally, we guide users towards relevant conversations, even if they stray off-topic.

Another important step in our rebuild is incorporating the Socratic method into the design of our AI system. The Socratic method is a teaching approach where instructors ask probing questions to encourage critical thinking and help students discover knowledge through dialogue and inquiry. It promotes deeper understanding by guiding learners to explore concepts and challenge assumptions themselves. It’s widely used in education to foster deeper understanding and intellectual growth, and the idea of implementing this method in our AI system struck me when I attended the Future Talent Summit in Stockholm in mid-June..

One thing we’ve learned by talking to potential customer organisations is the concern that users, for example, students, will straight out copy and paste what our AI model replies to them. Another important factor, especially from our end, is that introducing and designing our conversational AI system with elements of such a widely known and established method of teaching, sets our AI apart from the substitute models and competitors out there that people compare us to, for example, the widely-known ChatGPT.

Alongside all these new updates, we’re continuously refactoring prompts and fixing bugs as we go, to continuously improve our AI.

Chukwudi isn’t the only one who’s been hard at work. Our Lead Engineer Abreham has made several updates throughout June, both in the front- and backend. One major implementation is setting up the backend logic for organisations to administer their entrepreneur and coach users, as well as their organisation settings.

We’re closing in on our Minimum Sellable Product (MSP) with a final core feature for organisation admins. This feature is crucial as it enables organisations to use our app independently as they’ll be able to, for example, create and manage teams and users, payments, and organisation settings. To enable this, Abreham set up necessary configurations and dependencies in our backend to handle requests efficiently, as well as implemented new user interfaces so that organisation admins easily can manage their data, users, and billing.

Abreham not only added admin features for organisations but also enabled entrepreneurs to download their BMC as a PDF. This involved mapping BMC questions to values and required updates to our database, cutting frontend query times.

Lastly, we’ve implemented front-end components and functionalities to ensure compatibility with Android devices, added list views for coach and entrepreneur users, fixed a lot of UI bugs, updated a datetime picker component, and will during July continue to establish a consistent design and interaction pattern across our app.

On my end, I attended the Future Talent Summit in Stockholm on the 18th and 19th, hosted by the Future Talent Council. It was a great opportunity to make new connections and explore potential partnerships. While the event wasn’t focused on investors, I did meet with some potential customers, as well as connections that could introduce us to more customers. One example of this is my meeting with Prendho, a business incubator based in Ecuador. We discussed the potential for a pilot project, which, if successful, could pave the way for more customers across the entire UBI Global network of incubators, of which Prendho is a member. To be continued!

In mid-June, we heard back from the SuperCharger Ventures accelerator, and although we weren’t selected for the upcoming cohort, the feedback was encouraging. Unlike most accelerator and incubator programs, we did receive some specific feedback: four out of five reviewers expressed enthusiasm for Edventures, but our limited traction was cited as the reason we didn’t advance to the interview stage. I’m still very positive about the opportunity the SuperCharger accelerator presents, and we’ll definitely apply to the upcoming cohorts. Their extensive experience and network in Southeast Asia align perfectly with our primary target markets and go-to-market strategy, as Southeast Asia is one of our prioritised geographies.

Our outreach campaign aimed at Swedish upper secondary/high schools participating in the JA company programme performed well in May, as shared in our previous newsletter. We’ve already had productive meetings with some schools and are scheduling more for when they reopen in August, following their early June year-end closures. Although we launched the campaign slightly late, we’re optimistic about continuing these discussions and potentially confirming pilot projects once school staff return from holidays in August. This timeframe also allows us 1.5 months to further refine our prototype, enhancing its readiness for commercial deployment.

Out of the applications we submitted in May, and apart from the SuperCharger Ventures application already mentioned, we also heard back from the Vinnova Nordic Innovation House Fellowship and the Eureka Investment Readiness Programme. While I wasn’t selected for the Vinnova Nordic Innovation House Fellowship this time, which is a personal fellowship, I’m thrilled to share that Edventures has been chosen for the Eureka Investment Readiness Programme delegation to Web Summit! This opportunity is significant for us as it aligns perfectly with our goal to secure our first investment by Q4 this year. It’s a validation of our efforts and mission, and I believe all wins are worth celebrating!

We’re still waiting to hear back from the Halcyon EquityTech Fellowship (an incubator for impact founders based in DC in the US), as well as the Eureka Investment Readiness Programme delegation to Switch in Singapore.

In last month’s newsletter, I announced that we had initiated our recruitment process to find our next Product Designer. We received over 150 applications and conducted between 10 to 20 initial and follow-up interviews. In our last newsletter, I said that we’ll “most likely introduce our latest addition to the team in the June newsletter” but we have since then decided to push this recruitment process to August as we didn’t find a candidate who fully matched our expectations for commitment and passion. One thing that I’ve learned over the years building the Edventures team is that compromising on commitment and passion isn’t an option.

As we enter July, the overarching sentiment can be captured by the phrase “finding our footing.” This reflects our journey past a period of significant change, including successfully onboarding and settling in Chukwudi, as well as implementing a complete overhaul of our AI backend. I sense that we’re now establishing a solid foundation as we advance our prototype into a more mature product ready for real-world applications. Simultaneously, we’re actively engaging with stakeholders, increasing awareness about Edventures. From a strategic standpoint, I believe we’re currently in our strongest position yet, with even greater opportunities ahead.

What’s in the pipeline for next month?

While we missed our goal of securing a pilot project by the end of June, our focus in July is to schedule demos and sign LOIs/MOUs for pilot projects. We’ve already had positive demos with JA Malta, Philippines, South Africa, and Malaysia.

With our complete rebuild, as well as onboarding Chukwudi, taking most of our time in May and June, I’m not surprised we missed our goal of securing at least one pilot project by the end of June. The reason for this is that our previous version of the prototype that we demoed had core functionality flaws, so instead of demoing a product that wasn’t working as intended, we put most demos on hold throughout June until we had the new AI backend ready. I also believe that was the right decision as we now are starting to pick up the pace and can demo a product that functions as intended, giving the right impression to potential customers and users.

On that note, I want to thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to sharing more updates with you soon!

Stay foolish, stay ambitious!

Alexander and the Edventures team