ETEC 522 – May 2012

Harmonious Simplicity of Haiku LMS

Bryan Falcon, Allen Angell and Reynard Hilman are founders of Haiku Learning Management System. Haiku provides a mean of managing curricular content in an online environment that could be used for both blended or virtual classrooms. Their service packages are geared towards both school districts and individual teachers. This system includes features such as website creator, student collaboration tools, assessment tools et cetera. They pitch to provide a simple learning management solution to teachers which will require less than 10 minutes of maintenance per week, so teachers could focus on developing content rather than dealing with the technology interface. 

Bryan Rafael Falcón, Founder & CEO

Bryan has a strong background in fine arts and strongly believes that visual storytelling can enrich a learning environment and enhance the learning experience for each student. His background in fine arts and passion for education helps him drive Haiku LMS towards the vision of providing simplistic and harmonious learning management system to ease the pain points that educators expressed to him.

Allen Angell, Founder & President

Allen is the communicator and the business backbone of Haiku LMS. His skills complement the vision of Bryan and the two forms a dynamic duo to bring Haiku to live. He has a vision of creating a community of educators to disassemble the isolation that he has observed from educators he met due to geographical and financial constraints. From his acquaintance with teachers, he gained a clear understanding what teachers need to be encouraged to venture into eLearning, which in turns allow him to provide insight for the direction and focus of Haiku in providing hassle-free service to its users.

Reynard Hilman, Founder & Lead Software Engineer

Reynard is experienced in developing web applications for school districts and post secondary education institutes. He is one of the three pillars of Haiku providing the technical and educational perspective to this venture. His knowledge of back-end architecture provides confidence in the interface stability for the Haiku LMS.

Overall, the three founders all contribute their unique value to Haiku. I believe that their success lies in how each of them are very focused and specialized in an essential part of business for Haiku (vision, communication and technology). This allow them to create a LMS system without the risk of a biased skill set leading towards a product that has multiple weaknesses in which the founder has a lack of knowledge to address and lead improvements on.  

Personal Reflection

I have always been slightly concerned about my own entrepreneurial potential as I have visions but I lack the business know-how and I am not particularly strong in my technical knowledge either. From analyzing Haiku, I am inspired in a way that if I find the right partnership, I should be able to carry out my vision as Bryan has with Allen and Reynard. This, of course, is easier said than done because having a diversity of skill set is a bonus, but having a diversified vision could be deadly. Hence, I would like to learn more about this company and if possible, more about the dynamic amongst these three founders to deepen my own understanding about the success of their partnership aside from their skills and background that I have learned through this superficial research.