In this episode: Frank is talking with Mindaugas Petrutis, the CEO of Coho, which is enabling companies to curate peer groups at scale. This came as a spin-off from On Deck, the global startup community for founders. For Mindaugas, his journey in community building began nearly a decade ago, creating spaces for meaningful interactions and learning while working at InVision and On Deck. Through his work in assembling nearly 400 peer-groups, he unearthed a key insight: true professional growth stems from a blend of challenge and support found in diverse, thoughtfully curated peer groups.

Now he's scaling this concept and the MVP or v1 will be out later this year. The goal is to democratise access to this rich learning model, ensuring professionals across all fields can tap into the power of peer interaction. This approach counters the prevalent issues of loneliness, disengagement, and retention in the modern workplace.

We talk about:

The transformative potential of collective learning experiences, the integration of AI for group facilitation, the significance of customer feedback and prioritizing customer interactions for validation, the opportunity & complexity of implementing peer learning in large companies….and lots more.

Outtakes:

• A lot of companies have thought about implementing like the true concept of peer learning, but they either started and failed or got scared of the complexity.
• And what fascinates me is; how do people build relationships and learn from each other when you bring a group of people together in various settings.
• If this is successful, it falls way beyond the kind of basic learning tools because you start tackling, truly tackling employee engagement and retention with something like this. And that unlocks very different budgets and speed as to which you can move within an organization.
• You know that these folks are talking about, in real time, the things that they need, that they care about. And so being able to integrate with, say, learning management systems, you then can start building nearly a true recommendation system for the employee needs.

The ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠EdTech Garage⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a community for early-stage European EdTech startups where founders can scale up faster through the founder community, matchmaking and specialized resources. In this podcast series we interview startup founders & players supporting early-stage EdTech startups from across Europe. We get straight to the point in 20+ minutes and publish new episodes roughly every month. You can find the transcript from each podcast on the site below.

• Join the community on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠edtechgarage.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (⁠⁠⁠www.linkedin.com/company/edtechgarage/⁠⁠⁠)

Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Frank Albert Coates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ehsansation

In this episode: Frank is talking with ⁠Noam Gerstein, the CEO of the bina school - a fully online primary transnational school for kids aged 4-12. Noam started university at 16 in Tel-Aviv, worked for physichians for human rights. Founded, bootstrapped and exited a business at 26. Then did more than 7+ years of global K-6 research that culminated in the bina school.

We talk about: The need to solve serious problems as an entrepreneur and not small consumer problems of discomfort, how building a school takes time, effort and careful adjustment, how entrepreneurship is like eating dirt for a long time, why getting a white male in the room helps for funding ….and lots more.

Outtakes:

• When kids go to a local school, they meet their local peers, and the educators that are available to them are the ones that are in their neighborhood, more or less. In Bina, children can learn with children from the very north to the very south of their time zone. They are matched according to their needs, not according to their location. Also to their educators by the way. And then we see wonders like two kids from very different sides of the aisle or of the wall or of the war learning together every day and becoming best friends. And that's marvelous.
• I think, you know, success would be to walk into a village in the middle of nowhere and that there are children there in multiple aged, in a grandma's hut or whatever, that are all recipients of like the world's best education. That's the dream, right?
• So either you have a strong enough network or enough financial resources to put things off the ground on your own with whatever it takes, and then start when you have something to actually sell. That's a one option. Or you like eat dirt for like four years. And hopefully you have the ability to do both.

The ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠EdTech Garage⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a community for early-stage European EdTech startups where founders can scale up faster through the founder community, matchmaking and specialized resources. In this podcast series we interview startup founders & players supporting early-stage EdTech startups from across Europe. We get straight to the point in 20+ minutes and publish new episodes roughly every month. You can find the transcript from each podcast on the site below.

• Join the community on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠edtechgarage.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (⁠⁠www.linkedin.com/company/edtechgarage/⁠⁠)

Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Frank Albert Coates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ehsansation

In this episode: Frank is talking to Lula de León, a designer, teacher, entrepreneur and mother. She is the CEO and co-founder of Leemons, a startup born in May 2021 with the goal of transforming the digitalization of learning in educational centers with its innovative SaaS LMS platform.

We talk about: How the lack of innovation in the LMS/LXP segment pushed her to create the company, that you need to be ready to move fast in an uncertain market, how peer connections help to maintain mental health and get support, how she raised the 1,5M EUR….and lots more.

Outtakes:

• And then I enter the education technology market, and I thought, what is happening in LMS or in LXP technology. That the companies that are developing this kind of software for the educational centers don't need to innovate at the same level that the e-commerce, travel or banking industries.
• But, there are a lot of startups that are trying so hard, that have great products and they are now in danger to close because the market is difficult and the moment is very complicated. So even though you have a secret sauce, you need to be prepared always to move, move forward because things are not easy, not easy in this industry.
• We know a lot about a person, to whom we want to sell a T-shirt. But, we don't know anything about a person who wants to learn something new. So it is a bit stupid that educational centers are not learning organizations when they are teaching all the time.

The ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠EdTech Garage⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a community for early-stage European EdTech startups where founders can scale up faster through the founder community, matchmaking and specialized resources. In this podcast series we interview startup founders & players supporting early-stage EdTech startups from across Europe. We get straight to the point in 20+ minutes and publish new episodes roughly every month. You can find the transcript from each podcast on the site below.

• Join the community on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠edtechgarage.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (⁠www.linkedin.com/company/edtechgarage/⁠)

Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Frank Albert Coates⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Ehsansation