Massimo Banzi (photo by David Cuartielles)

Massimo Banzi is the co-founder of the Arduino project along with David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe, Gianluca Martino, and David A. Mellis. In 2005, Banzi and his team created the Arduino microcontroller to serve the needs of Banzi’s students at the Interaction Design Institute of Ivrea. The students were looking for a cheap microcontroller that could be used to program their projects and at the time the cheapest micro controller on the market sold for around $100. Arduino was created to be open source and available to designers and artists with little to no engineering background.

Banzi is an advocate for open source hardware, as well as an interaction designer, and an educator. Prior to creating the Arduino microcontroller, Banzi worked as a consultant for major clients including Prada, Artemide, Persol, Whirlpool, V&A Museum and Adidas. He also worked as a software architect for clients  such as Italia Online, Sapient, Labour Party, BT, MCI WorldCom, SmithKlineBeecham, Storagetek, BSkyB and boo.com. 

Arduino is an “open source electronic prototyping platform”. As an open source hardware, Arduino is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac as well as other electronics currently on the market. It is also backwards compatible to previous versions of Arduino. Banzi recognizes that Arduino is not the only microcontroller on the market and speaks highly of his competitors while pointing out the differences in intended users. Banzi recognizes that the Arduino user has morphed from a design student to the hobbyist, artist, and designer. The possibilities are limitless with current uses as varied as a device that sends tweets when houseplants need water, to an exhibit on brains at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In an Ars Technica interview Banzi estimated that 80% of the projects at the Maker Faire used Arduinos in some way.

An official Arduino Uno with descriptions of the I/O locations

David Cuartielles, a co-founder of Arduino, works for Medea research platform, is writing his PhD in prototyping tools for education, is supervising the Arduino web-structure, and is teaching university classes.

Tom Igoe is a professor at NYU with a Master’s Degree in Interactive Telecommunication. He is a core partner in Arduino and he is responsible for the direction of the project. He manages the documentation and examples for the project as well as managing the relations between Arduino and the companies that license the brand.

Gianluca Martino oversees production and distribution for Arduino and is focussed on the emerging markets of China, India, and South America.

David Mellis is the lead software developer of Arduino. Mellis is a graduate student at MIT with the High-Low Tech group.

Arduino is a product that was intended for a small audience of design students but found its niche with a much larger audience that continues to grow. The brand has not spread through traditional means, it spread quickly online without any money spent on marketing or advertising. The success of the brand has to do with the variety of applications as well as the relatively quick learning curve. The rise of the mentality of creating for the sake of creating and the Makers Faire community has helped spread the concept of the Arduino and the reasonable price has meant that a variety of people have experimented and played with it.

http://arduino.cc

Brodkin, J. (2013). Arduino creator explains why open source matters in hardware, too. Retrieved from http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/arduino-creator-explains-why-open-source-matters-in-hardware-too/#p3

Kushner, D. (2011) The Making of Arduino: How five friends engineered a small circuit board that’s taking the DIY world by storm. Retrieved from http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/the-making-of-arduino 

http://www.massimobanzi.com/about/

http://www.nav.mah.se/person/id/K3DACU

Founder-Leader Name: Martin Dougiamas

(picture taken from: http://blog.wiziq.com/recap-of-moodle-mooc-wiziq/)

Venture Name: Moodle

(Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment)

Venture Description

Moodle is a free online learning platform (Learning Management System), based in Perth, Australia. It has a free source license and is used in many high school as well as post-secondary online programs. Some of its features include assignment dropbox, gradebook, discussion forum, online quiz/test, Upload/Download of files. It also has a variety of plug-in’s available which adds more elaborate functions to the platform.  One of the best features of Moodle is its Moodle Community – which consists of over a million users who interact with each other to provide support.

Short Bio of Martin Dougiamas

Martin Dougiamas was born in 1969.   He is a computer scientist and an educator. His has experiences as the webmaster of an university, as well as the manager of a WebCT system. He was frustrated with the learning systems available to him, and started Moodle in 1999.

Martin Dougiamas believes in the constructivist model of teaching and implements this theory in his invention of Moodle.  Moodle has a strong management team , as well as an integration team, backend team, frontend team, sites team, and a mobile team. The responsibilities of each team member are very specific and well-defined. There are also Moodle partners who provide commercial services to the users

Personal Reflections

Martin Dougiamas is passionate about Moodle.  This is very inspirational because an entrepreneur must be passionate about the product that he/she is developing.  Moodle provides a ‘shell’ for a platform, and allows the users to modify it according to his/her needs.  This is a great example of a product that is appealing to customers because of its versatilit.  As an entrepreneurs, I need to have a  vision for my company.   My management team must be able to share the same vision, and also be equipped with the concrete skills and abilities needed to reach our common goal.

Flipboard

Mike Mccue – Co-Founder and CEO (Left), Evan Doll – Co-Founder (Right)

On the Product:

Flipboard is an incredibly intuitive application for mobile devices, which advertises itself as the first “social” magazine. The application was conceived by co-founders Evan Doll and Mike Mccue (now CEO of Flipboard Inc.), as an application that allows people to share, tag and assemble their own collections of stories found online. Flipboard utilizes a variety of social networks and allows its users to aggregate their resources into content displayed as a digital magazine.

On The Founders:

Mike Mccue has a wealth of experience in the realm of mobile technologies both on the management and development side. His previous experience as the CEO of Tellme Networks (a Microsoft subsidiary) attests to his competency as a leader and his experience as the developer and founder of Paper Software, a company that pioneered 3-D browser technology and later bought-out by Netscape demonstrates his technical expertise. Evan Doll, a former iPhone Engineer for Apple and lecturer at Standford University, heads up the product development and strategy side of the operations. Between these two individuals, it is clear that Flipboard has a competent leadership team with vast amounts of valuable experience, both in terms of the business and product development.

Analysis and Reflection:

At the turn of last year, Flipboard announced that they had reached the 100 million user mark. This news was quickly followed the company boasted the raising of another $50 million in their financing bid, raising their valuation to $800 million, a figure supported by Goldman Sachs amongst other venture analysts.What Flipboard’s success indicates is that a co-founder model, in which a business specialist teams up with a technical specialist can work exceedingly well, but the caveat being that both individuals have an understanding and appreciation for what the other brings to the table.

Venture name: BrainPOP (www.brainpop.com)
Founder-leader name: Dr. Avraham Kadar
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Description of venture:
BrainPOP is a group of online websites that produce educational videos for students in grades K-12 (Wikipedia, 2014). The curriculum-based content allows users to access videos, quizzes, games and other resources, in the subjects of: science, social studies, English, math, engineering and tech, health and arts and music (BrainPOP, 2014). This online subscription site is utilized in more than 20% of U.S. schools and is growing internationally (BrainPOP, 2014).

Background of CEO/Founder:
Dr. Avraham Kadar created BrainPOP in 1999 when he was trying to explain the concept of asthma and allergies to his young patients (BrainPOP, 2014). His inspiration came from his late wife, Naomi, who was an educator (The Naomi Foundation). Now, BrainPOP is used to educate children on a variety of topics and carries on the values that Avraham and his wife are passionate about.

Team:
The Vice Presidents of BrainPOP are the children of Dr. Avraham Kadar (The Naomi Foundation). They all come from a variety of backgrounds and are responsible for different aspects of the company (BrainPOP ESL, operations management) (The Naomi Foundation). There is also an advisor and managing director.

My thoughts:
I think its inspiring how Kadar’s idea blossomed into a successful business and brand. I find it heart-warming how the family is working together to carry on their family values and Naomi’s passions. I have used BrainPOP and like my students, I love it!

References:
BrainPOP (2014). Retrieved from http://www.brainpop.com/
Dr. Avraham Kadar [photograph]. Retrieved from http://www.pinterest.com/pin/71846556525264642/
The Naomi Foundation. Who We Are. Retrieved from http://naomi.org/who-we-are/
Wikipedia (2014). BrainPOP. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainPop

John Qualter, Chief Creative Officer (L)
Frank Sculli, CEO (R)

BioDigital Systems, co-founded by John Qualter and Frank Sculli in 2002, developed a 3D health visualization body called BioDigital Human,which enables learners to understand the human anatomy in a way that simulates real life accurately. Qualter, a digital image specialist is also a research assistant professor at NYU School of Medicine which puts him at an optimal location to understand the needs of the medical school, while Sculli, a software engineer had previously worked on projects such as Smile, a cleft pallet simulator.

In 2012, NYU School of Medicine’s Division of Educational Informatics partnered with BioDigital Systems to adopt the BioDigital Human web-based platform into the anatomy curriculum. The interactive and comprehensive application allows learners to study anatomy, disease and treatment in 3D.  The application is free, but it’s special features such as favorites and the ability to see cross sections are subscription based.   The BioDigital Human, along side of real cadaverous and ipad textbooks are used as learning tools to enhance the anatomy lab experience. Students are able to see demonstrations of how diseases or injuries that impacted the patient through the virtual 3D body and practice how to perform procedures.  With the limit of cadaverous as learning tools, the BioDigital Human allows students limitless opportunities to practice procedures.  Most notably, BioDigital raised $4 million led by FirstMark Capital with participation from NYU Venture Fund to expand their work in API functionality and accelerate the development of user features together with their team of scientists, software engineers, physicians and digital artists who are trained specifically in biology.

As my personal interest lies in the nexus between Education and Gaming, I was drawn to Mind Snacks, a smart startup who blends gameplay elements with learning new languages.

Jesse Pickard

Founder and CEO of Mind Snacks. Jesse has attended Syracuse University and has focused worked with digital ad agency Razorfish before being tapped for funding for the Mind Snacks venture.

 Product

Funding

Within 2.5 years of its founding, Mind Snacks has received over 6.5 million (USD) in start-up investment from Sequoia Capital in their latest fund raising cycle. Prior to that it raised 1.2 million (USD) from a variety of smaller funds and angel investors.

Genesis

In 2010, Jesse Pickard and his business partners sough to find a way to turn their Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja addictions into something with greater meaning. Lacking any true options,  they launched an educational app that used the addictive mechanics of mobile gaming to teach people those fundamental vocabulary, reading, writing and comprehension skills in their language of choice.

Analysis

One of interesting aspects of Mind Snacks is its attempt to capitalize on addictive and repetitive gameplay to increase learning and retention. This application is an aggressive attempt to bring this about in a very user friendly and engaging format. From the perspective of scholarship, there does not appear to be any study or work presented by the company that attempts to justify or prove their objectives. The CEO has some background in user interface development and is counting on the ‘game experience’ to be the principle draw for the user. With a bit more theory behind their practice, this tool could be very well received by school boards and educational networks who require strong theoretical underpinnings for new products that may be useful for enhancing the educational experience. One interesting aspect of their work is the data that their app collects on ‘how well’ you complete the games. Low scores indicate problems with one aspect of the language  while high score demonstrates strengths. This information could be used to by the user to understand where they need to improve and where their natural abilities lie.

The company itself is very small at this point which allows its team to collaborate rapidly and effectively in executing its goals. However, this may later become a challenge should they expand as it is always difficult to preserve the informal atmosphere once a considerable amount of new employees make their presence felt.

Jose Ferreira, Founder and CEO of Knewton.com: founded the interactive-learning company Knewton, he is a graduate of Carleton College with a BA in Philosophy and received his MBA from Harvard Business School and previuos to founding Knewton, was a Kaplan executive, derivatives trader, venture capitalist, and strategist for John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

The venture is Knewton.com, an “adaptive learning infrastructure” (Knewton.com) that allows adaptation of various learning applications. A stand out feature of Knewton is its predictive analystics, being able to predict and direct students on what to study or do next in their course, allowing for a student-centered approach offering differentiation for each participant. Knewton has partnered with companies who can then develop adaptive experiences within their own content.

Through Jose’s blog postings, he addresses fundamental issues posed by the public and industry when it comes to utilizing educational technologies, for example issues related to privacy, incorporating learning styles, the transformation of higher education and much more.

This is a blurb from the article A Boom Time for Education Start Ups, written by Nick DeSantis,

And Mr. Ferreira said the typical venture capitalist’s approach—investing seed money that allows a young company to cobble together a bare-bones product—usually leads to piecemeal improvements that aren’t big enough to attract institutional interest.

“Education start-ups have to think big,” said Mr. Ferreira. “I don’t think they can try to produce something that’s incremental, which is a little bit antithetical to the way venture capitalists think.” He added that future investments in emerging companies that have secured early-stage backing might not appear if those firms don’t make enough progress.

Knewton received $33 million dollar investment in 2012, at which point it is now being used by higher learning institutions (DeSantis. Para 4), as well as setting lucrative business partnerships with the likes of Pearson, and Microsoft, just to name a few. 7 people sit on the Board of Directors, of which are involved in ventures, finance and the investment world.

Jose’s background is really interesting, because in previous founders of ed tech companies we have been searching through, much of the background is in and around teaching, education, and IT development rather than the business and entrepreneurial side like Jose’s. Jose’s understanding for the ed tech market is capitalized in his marketing as well as in his interviews regarding the role of educational technology platforms. I do have to say in that researching various ed tech ventures and platforms, I found the website to lack accessibility in terms of really knowing what services and products are offered, it seemed very high level and thus confused me in terms of who the company is directing its product to (I am assuming high level companies such as those that they partner with ie. Microsoft).

References

DeSantis, N. 2012, March 18. A boom time for education start-ups. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Accessed via: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Boom-Time-for-Education/131229/

Kamenetz, Anya. 2013, November 25. A Q & A with Jose Ferreira. Fast Company. Accessed via: http://live.fastcompany.com/Event/A_QA_With_Jose_Ferreira_Founder_And_CEO_Of_Knewton?Page=0

http://www.knewton.com/

Sebastian Thrun

Sebastian Thrun is a research professor at Stanford, a Google Fellow,and a co-founder and CEO of Udacity.

Udacity is a platform for massively online open courses (MOOC’s) that was started in 2011. According to Udacity’s website: “Udacity was born out of a Stanford University experiment in which Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig offered their ‘Introduction to Artificial Intelligence’ course online to anyone, for free. Over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled and not much later, Udacity was born. Now <they’re> a growing team of educators and engineers on a mission to change the future of education by bridging the gap between real-world skills, relevant education, and employment.” The value proposition was to offer free education to the masses, thus producing a trained workforce for Udacity’s sponsers. Some courses are actually delivered by advocates of the sponsoring company’s products and those products are used in the course. Up to January 2013, Udacity continued to offer courses for free to anyone with online access to Udacity’s website. But the success rate was poor. Too few people were completing the courses, and among those who completed the pass rate was low. After charging a small fee for courses in the late 2012, Udacity found that offering courses for a fee dramatically increased the completion rate, though not the pass rate among people completing. Thrun and his team concluded that the pass rate depends on getting the right fit between what Udacity is offering and the ability of the candidate student to take full advantage of the opportunity – Thrun decided to refocus on a different market segment. Udacity now offers paid programmes of study in partnership with universities and with sponsership from stakeholders in industry. Students must now pay a substantial fee for a course of study leading to certification.

Sebastian Thrun first came to public attention in 2005 when he won a DARPA grand challenge to develop a robotic vehicle that can drive autonomously over a 128 mile course in the Mojave desert – a contest which captured the public imagination. Thrun’s vehicle went further than any of its competitors and won the 2 million USD cash prize. In 2007 he joined Google, where he led the program to develop its self-driving car, and then founded Google X, the research lab behind Google Glass and other research projects. With respect to his motivation for co-founding Udacity, Thrun is credited with saying that after teaching his first MOOC course to some 160,000 people in one go, he found it difficult to go back to spending the same amount of time and effort teaching just 200 people at a time.

The Leadership Team at Udacity consists of eight people. Brief profiles of the members of this team as well as that of the Advisory Board can be found at https://www.udacity.com/us. According to the information there, the team members, in aggregate, have substantial prior experience working with successful ventures as well as developing online courses and teaching online. The advisory board consists of seven accomplished individuals providing leadership experience and established professional networks in education, entrepreneurship and venture funding.

Upon reflection, I am struck by the need for a founder and CEO to appeal to the diverse interests of the stakeholders in the venture. I imagine that it takes a lot of thought to craft a viable proposition that appeals to all concerned. I am also struck by the value of testing that proposition and pivoting when necessary. Thrun seems to be very tenacious in his drive to make this venture viable and the recent pivot to a new business model is an exciting development. Udacity’s story continues.

“Don’t chase after your dreams. Catch them.”

Zaption: Revolutionizing online video for education

Venture Genesis

Zaption is a downtown San Francisco edtech startup. It is the brainchild of Charlie Stigler, 21, a software engineer who dropped out of Columbia University.

The Idea Charlie Stigler wanted to make it easy and quick for teachers, trainers and content publishers to create interactive and engaging educational video lessons with images, text, quizzes, and discussions using existing videos from YouTube, Vimeo and personal videos. Additionally, with Zaption’s analytics, instructors get immediate feedback on how students interact with the content and understand key concepts.

The Result Zaption transforms the video experience from a “lean back” experience to an engaging “lean forward” tour. As its slogan goes, “Don’t Just watch. Learn.”

The basic author plan is free, which allows anyone to watch unlimited tours (video lessons), create and share tours, track viewer progress, and copy and edit ready-to-use tours.

Here’s an excellent example. Let’s Rock is created by a high school teacher who uses visually stunning imagery to get students interested in studying geology while teaching basic concepts. Turn your speakers up!

Opportunity Activation

Back in 2012, Charlie Stigler had a dream and the Thiel Fellowship of $100,000 he had just won helped make it come true.  Since then Stigler’s company has grown to six employees and raised a total of $650,000 seed funding from investor Dr. Michael J. Burry and the NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit venture philanthropy firm working to transform public education for low-income children.

The Right Stuff

Vision Charlie Stigler is the CTO and Co-Founder of Zaption. He is a remarkable young man with a vision. He wants to create something that will improve the lives of people.

“I want to make lasting, broad, and helpful change in the world,” he says. “I think that the best way for me to do that is to work at a high level on developing my own ideas, and this is exactly what the Thiel Fellowship is for … I think I can improve lives more as a great entrepreneur than I could as a great software engineer working for somebody else.”

Entrepreneurial Background Another factor that contributed to his success is that Stigler grew up immersed in entrepreneurship. His father is both a professor of developmental psychology at UCLA and an entrepreneur who has started up two companies focused on education. His mother is currently developing a computer-tutoring service for older people in her neighborhood.

Entrepreneurial Spirit Stigler began developing and selling iPhone apps in his sophomore year of high school, and wrote popular open-source study application SelfControl. That summer he founded his first company, Cubicl, with three seniors. He started working with his father on Zaption as a high school senior.

Leaving Columbia was not an easy decision, but some ideas just couldn’t wait. Stigler was able to seize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to accept the Thiel Fellowship which gave him the kind of mentoring and financial support he needed to work on his projects.

The Right People

Charlie Stigler had incredible support from people who wanted him to succeed. While at Columbia, Stigler was on the lightweight rowing team and when he had to leave Columbia for five days to interview for the Thiel Fellowship, it coincided directly with an important home race but his coach gave him a hugh-five! He also had support and encouragement from Columbia to take two years off to receive the prestigious fellowship.

Stigler works with a small team of highly talented people at Zaption. Bios from Zaption.com:

Jim Stigler: Co-Founder Charlie Stigler co-founded Zaption with his father Jim Stigler who is a professor, researcher, author and entrepreneur. He is an associate dean at UCLA, co-founder of Startup UCLA, and led the video studies for TIMSS – the international project to compare math education. Jim is also the author of two popular education books, The Teaching Gap and The Learning Gap, and his previous company, LessonLab, was an early innovator in online video for education. LessonLab was acquired by Pearson in 2003.

Chris Fitzgerald Walsh: CEO Chris Fitzgerald Walsh leads Zaption’s business development and operations. He previously led product development and strategic initiatives for New Tech Network, and was the co-founder of Brightstorm. Chris is also the creator of the Infinite Thinking Machine. Chris earned his M.A. in Learning, Design & Technology from Stanford, and a B.A. and M.Ed. from UCLA.

Soroosh Izadian: Software Engineer Soroosh Izadian is a programmer experienced with Java, C/C++/Objective-C, Python, Ruby, PHP, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB databases. He is particularly strong with front-end web development (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) and dabbles in Flash and vector illustration. Soroosh earned a B.A. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley.

Fiona Nowlin: Customer Happiness Guru Fiona Nowlin is responsible for delighting Zaption’s customers with world class support and training. She is an experienced researcher, project manager, and ed tech trainer who worked for the University of Michigan’s School of Education before joining Zaption. Fiona earned a B.A. in Psychology and Modern Greek from the University of Michigan.

Personal Reflections

Background, skills and motivation are prospective and prescribed attributes of successful entrepreneurs. I also believe that independence and an inexhaustible drive are critical prerequisites, which Charlie Stigler obviously has. At the young age of 19, he made clear, informed choices about what he wanted to do and set out to do just that.

It makes a lot of sense to me when technology entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, embark on philanthropy which funds worthwhile tech ventures and provides opportunity for new, unproven ideas to grow. Presenting the challenge “Tell us how you would like to change the world”, his 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship asks young people to reconsider higher education and drop out for a time to learn by doing, especially by forming companies with a change-the-world objective. Recipients of the fellowship are given $100,000 with no strings attached and are mentored by a network of visionary thinkers, investors, scientists, and entrepreneurs who provide guidance and business connections that can’t be replicated in any classroom.

I find the story of Charles Stigler and Zaption inspiring because it reflects the amazing times we live in. Never in history have there been so many opportunities for entrepreneurs to become successful beyond their wildest dreams. The Thiel entrepreneurial model prizes creativity and bold thinking. Rather than getting weighed down by huge student loans that severely limit the range of things they can do with their lives, young people now have opportunities to grow their ventures and attain levels of success that may otherwise be unreachable.

I especially love that the venture genesis is an idea that is incredibly simple and focused – what unmet need could lead to a venture? The unmet need is that while videos abound, teachers and trainers want to be able to put them together easily to make interactive lessons. Zaption shows that small ideas can truly be big.

Stigler’s previous work is also a very simple idea. It is an open-source Mac focus application SelfControl that lets you block your own (yes!) access to distracting websites, your mail servers, or anything else on the Internet.

Hope this venture inspires all of us to look around for simple ideas and solutions and our own tech venture story!

Sources:

Columbia Spectator on Student Charlie Stigler’s Thiel Fellowship

Kolodny, Lora. (2013). How I built it: Why Thiel supports dropouts. Wall Street Journal Eastern edition [New York, N.Y] 19 Dec 2013: B.5.

Zach Sims & Ryan Bubinski. Retrieved from http://static4.businessinsider.com.

Codecademy is an online educational platform that allows its users to take free programming classes in HTML & CSS, jQuery, Javascript, PHP, Python and Ruby through the use of interactive coding exercises, web projects and APIs. In addition, the site also allows for users to become content creators and create programming courses on their own. The site has a simple interface, is advertising-free and incorporates game elements such as badging and points to keep learners motivated. In April 2014, the site surpassed 24 million unique users.

The founders and current CEO/CTO, Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski, are both former students at Columbia University; Sims dropped out of university and worked in product and business development for startups (including GroupMe and drop.io) and the venture capital industry with AOL Ventures, while Bubinski, who had been building web applications since the age of 15, graduated with a degree in computer science and biophysics. The two originally planned on creating a learning network to connect students with other student teachers, but Sims couldn’t keep up with Babunski in terms of programming. The two then decided to create a resource that, according to Sims, “I would like learning from, and that Ryan would like teaching through.” 5 days after the site went live, it had already gained over 200,000 users, and within one year had raised over $12.5 million in venture capital.

The personal qualities that the founders appear to have that have made their venture a success so far are a mix of enthusiasm and expertise; when they started the company, the pair were in their early 20s, but both already had experience in their field – Sims in business development and Bubinski in programming. They identified a pain point in the market (the need for more professional training programs for programmers) and focused on ‘scalability before profitability’ by offering their courses for free in order to build a large user base.