Nova Educa is an educational consultancy that will bring tips so that young people can, from an early age, learn to innovate and become an entrepreneur, discovering countless possibilities for building a future promising.
Talking and learning about entrepreneurship through content is very important and contributes to the professional development of young people, but hear a true story of those who lived the situation brings more details about the reality of the business world. Following our series of interviews with CEOs or founders of startups, let's go chat with an entrepreneur who created a teaching platform that supports teachers and schools in classroom development and innovation: Pablo Sales.
Read too: Tips from entrepreneur Léo Gmeiner
Who is Pablo Sales?
Founder of Kanttum, EdTech focused on teacher training, Pablo Sales is part of the network of entrepreneurs at Endeavor and Lemann Foundation, where he was elected, in 2015, one of the six most innovative entrepreneurs in education in the Brazil. He participated in the mentoring program Scale Up Transforma and StartEd, was commercial director of Samba Tech, in addition to being commercial director of Starline Tecnologia.
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4 tips from Pablo Sales on entrepreneurship
Tip 1: Your products need to evolve and change
In 2014 the company was called Replay4me and aimed to record class for students to review.. After my first visit to a school, we received an invitation to PIVOTAR and record the classes so that teachers had a tool to reflect on their practice and later receive feedback.
Even though we didn't understand anything about teacher education, we understood that it was a real pain for schools, teachers, and we went ahead with the validation of this thesis. The result is that today we are the largest platform for teacher feedback in the country.
Another important change was when we were approved by the Lemann Center, in Stanford, to operate in Brazil. We understood that just recording the lesson and allowing feedback for the teacher was a small part of the training solution. We were honored to participate in the project and We receive advice from Stanford professors on how to observe a class., how to give feedback, how to create a rubric, how to generate a diagnosis of the teachers etc. Thereby, we repositioned the company, we were renamed Kanttum, and received 1.6 million to build the best teacher training product in the country.
Comment: The word "pivot" can be found with an internet search, but realize that your product needs changing to reach a more qualified and wider audience is extremely important for those with a vision of business. Listening to people and customers' opinions is essential to developing your product.
See too:3 positive points of being an entrepreneur
Tip 2: How to grow and develop your business?
Listening to the customer and building our solution always focused on solving a real problem.
Surround myself with good mentors and relationship networks (I participated in Lemann, Endeavor, Future Education and several others).
Having a team that dreams of you. Our company has a low turnover and this is unusual. I want to keep this up and I believe the main levers are: big dream — purpose alignment, total transparency and real growth
Comment: To grow, it became clear that relationship is very important, so open your mind and be always willing to meet anyone, as a listener today can become or refer a great customer tomorrow.
Tip 3: what to focus on in learning?
Learn about the market, course on how to raise capital and course on how to lead people.
Comment: Understanding your business ecosystem is very important and getting investments or contracts closed is a characteristic of success for companies, but we have to remember the work team. Nobody builds anything alone, having people who dream together only drives them to the right path.
Tip 4: the error
At the beginning of the company, we had a misalignment with one of the partners and we had to buy back his shares. Unfortunately we had little cash, we were running in bootstrap, we had a very difficult period financially speaking. What kept us motivated were the new projects we've conquered and a very relevant future perspective.
Comment: Making mistakes is part of any company, and once again the concern for people is a great challenge. Remaining resilient in difficult times, with the company on the right path, is something that great entrepreneurs will be forced to do at some point.
By New Educa
Nova Educa is an educational consultancy focused on developing projects in schools involving Apple Technology, with the implementation of iPads and teacher training. In addition, it also carries out the podcast Nova Educa Debate, with interviews about the educational market and BNCC about entrepreneurship and innovation contents. We will have several consultants collaborating with this column, which will be led by the innovation director, Carlos Coelho, Education enthusiast with experiences in multinational, at Singularity University (California), as a teacher and manager school; and we will have Priscila Coelho, operations director, specialist in educational technology training, creativity and innovation.
