During my senior year of college, I founded my second startup called Explore Interactive. This was a year where I was in sales mode 24 hours a day. I had to sell why me, why our product, and why now.
The early days of Explore Interactive remind me of my experience as a Fellow at enFocus; constantly pitching to anyone who will listen.
Building Connections 🌐
My first pitch to the South Bend startup ecosystem started as a discussion with the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Program with the Blended Learning Coordinator. Not only did she love Explore Interactive’s low cost STEM education app, but she recommended we test it throughout some of the ND ACE schools.
Our team has a vision to democratize STEM learning. Our pocket-size lab could have an immense social impact by improving STEM access to all children — girl or boy, wealthy or underserved, urban or rural.
With this newfound support in a new environment, I started searching for others who loved education and would be willing to hear the pitch. This led me to the IDEA Center where I had the chance to meet with the Director of Startups and pitch the company to him. Interestingly enough, he had recently founded a venture that helped students learn how to code. We talked about the difficulty of breaking into the K-12 education system and different tactics to accomplish these methods.
As you can see so far, one pitch leads to the next, and next, and next.
These meetings continued to happen as I was connected with wonderful people across the entire ecosystem. Some of these connections included school administration at Penn Harris Madison, South Bend Community School Corporation, Career Academy-Success Academy, and School City of Mishawaka.
With each connection, I validated the need our product was solving in the education space. But, I was also making new friends and connections who wanted none other than to see Explore! succeed.
Entrepreneurship is a lot more than just creating a product.
Additionally, I was refining the Explore! pitch each time to better explain the complexities of augmented reality technology. One especially helpful critique of our pitch came from Dr. Sandra Collins, Associate Teaching Professor at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. She was our assigned coach as part of the McCloskey New Venture Competition. She mentioned that we needed to cater better to our older audience members, avoiding words such as 3D assets, ground-planes, and other technical jargon. This advice ended up paying off as our team, after hours of pitch revision, was selected to receive one of the top awards at the competition.
More Than a Product 📈
Entrepreneurship is a lot more than just creating a product. You need people to listen to you. You need advice. You need mentors. You need resources. This couldn’t be more true and the South Bend-Elkhart region is a great place to have others listen, provide feedback, and foster an innovative idea.
Please consider supporting Explore Interactive and Wesley by preordering the Explore! set via their website: www.learnwithexplore.com
