Entrepreneurs of Budapest: Skool

A few months ago we met with the Skool founders, a triumvirate of visionary souls defying tech stereotypes and a rigid education system with coding workshops for young girls. The team shared amazing stories from the past two years, their philosophy of working as a non-profit with a for-profit mindset, as well as challenges working as the first in their field of social enterprise.

In a few sentences tell us a bit about Skool, and your story.

Szilvi: I went to New York exactly two years ago, where I spent six months, and after a few days in New Jersey, I was looking at what the tech companies are doing in the US and what kind of CSR programs they support. I realized that they help girls, and they put a lot of effort into getting kids involved in IT.

It was a freezing evening in NY that day when I proposed to Zsofi that we start something similar in Hungary. At that time I knew I would be coming home in May, and Zsofi got excited as well, so we have begun, thinking let’s do something really funny and exciting, something brand new to Budapest. Of course, this was all while Zsofi was in Barcelona and I was in NY :).

So we set up a little team through Skype, there were five or six of us on the Skype meetings, and the rest of the team was in Budapest. We started working on the curriculum and the whole program on how to involve Hungarian tech companies, and what kind of programs we should set up for Hungarian girls to make computer science exciting for them.

It turned out that the idea is valid. The girls loved the project. The companies were excited that something, some independent project is on the market, which was equally good for Morgan Stanely, or Prezi or LogMeIn.

They are all different from a cultural point of view. And after a pilot program, I just decided to quit and leave LogMeIn because it was so much working with the kids and working on a real project with the team. Peter did the same, and Zsofi was waving from BCN.

What was the moment when you realized that it was no longer a hobby project, and you wanted to make this a full-time job?

The turning point was when we had the 2-week summer camp, and none of the teachers were at the camp yet, and we needed someone. I asked for vacation time from LogMeIn, and they said, ‘No you just got back, no holiday.’ I said, actually I have to be there with the kids and because my heart is there. That was the turning point when I had to make the decision.

How about you Zsofi?

Zsofi: For me the turning point came a bit later. I moved to Barcelona a few months before this idea came, and I thought that I would be there for a long time. It was my dream for many years to live there. When Szilvi called me, and we started to work on it, I don’t think we knew what we started, we just knew that we wanted to do it. I remember this message from Szilvi 8 days after she called me, where she said, “Enough talking, let’s do it.”

That’s the attitude we have. We were working a lot, a lot of evenings, and Skypes, and Starbucks, and “Can you hear me?’s.” But we didn’t meet for 5 months, we started everything without personal meetings.

Very soon we realized that this is going to be bigger than what we expected, and during the pilot project we saw the demand. But at that time in Barcelona I had a job that was fairly new, and we were really unsure about the budget. It was perfect that Szilvi and Peti were able to do this full-time, for me it was a bit of time to see how the project goes. For me it was a lot harder to make a move back home. It was difficult, but more difficult not to be here.

During that year that you were working remotely — what kept you motivated?

At the first workshop, we were working with girls between 14–16, so they were pretty big. And I was so afraid that they would just leave it, and they just wouldn’t like the project.

But it turned out completely different.

After our pilot we all saw that we’re doing something that’s making an impact on lives, even though this was just a perception — we didn’t have a study back then, but now that we do the perception is validated.

But just to see how interested the girls were and the feedback from the parents, it’s something that I’ve never experienced before.

It’s ours — we can make decisions for ourselves, and it’s far more inspiring than working for any fantastic companies out there.

And Peter?

Peter: It started with a house party for me. May 1st, two years ago. Szilvi had just arrived home and opened the door for me. Here was this awesome blonde girl telling me about her new idea.

I was working at a job with a good salary, interesting challenges, and everything. But I liked the girl who was telling me about her new idea. So my trick was that I agreed to help her, and get started, hoping that we would meet a lot, and maybe something would happen :).

Out of what?

Out of both! I was less interested in the project in the beginning, but as it turns out both things worked out.

My story is only a bit more complicated because I had tons of workplaces. This was probably my 10th workplace. And the longest was my two-year stint at Microsoft, which is probably what my mom is still the proudest of.

I wasn’t much at Microsoft — just a size 6 font title on a sheet of paper. Here I’m at least a size 12 font on the same sheet of paper; it’s a totally different story.

So I’m happy because this is something that I like to do. And the way we work is, just because we’re sitting here with you guys tonight, doesn’t mean we won’t do anything until tomorrow at noon. When we need to, we work, when it’s not urgent, we can have more laid back mornings.

And this is a kind of work style that not a lot of people can allow themselves here. It comes with tons of risk and responsibility, of course a lot of commitments, but also way more happiness than anything I’ve experienced before.

I love it. Sometimes it’s tiring, and I don’t love it as much. But then, it’s always the case that every Saturday — which is when we hold our workshops — each week we get this amazing validation from the girls and their parents that what we’re doing is making an impact, and then you just have to say, “Ok, let’s reach even further.”

I’ve never felt this before. I’ve never felt like what I’m doing is making a positive impact that wouldn’t exist if we didn’t do it. Because we are the only option right now, which is also a huge motivation.

Can you tell us a specific story that stuck out to you from the past two years?

Peter: My favorite story goes beyond our project. It was a parent feedback of a girl that comes to us a lot to learn; she was 11 when she took part in our pilot project. She told us that she and her friend were going to start a startup, they were going to plan robots. They were completely serious, no smiles or laughs.

Since then, she follows us everywhere, learning, and evangelizing us at her school during computer class. Last year we had a parent conference where her mom was also present. Her mom is super enthusiastic. She shares and likes everything. She and her husband are waiters, catering at weddings and funerals, doing one of the harder, more tiring jobs there are.

Dea’s mom came to every event, listened to everything we had to say, and always told us that this is a great thing to hear that women can do it, you don’t have to be a genius, and the tech sector is for everyone.

Last year after the parent conference, Dea’s mom came over to tell us that she started taking math courses, and is going to start learning Javascript because she decided that at 40-something years old, she’s going to be a career changer. She didn’t want to be a server anymore; she wanted to be with her kids at night and probably stop dealing with tipsy guests.

Since then, she’s switched jobs, she works at a tech company that creates robot games. She got to know the sector through us and applied to this company. Now she switched from JavaScript to Python, and it’s amazing to see that we’ve impacted 724 girls through our program directly, but indirectly we’ve had an impact on so many more people and adults.

People believe us when we say, change your work, you can do it.

Zsofi: There are so many good stories. So I don’t know how much you know about our model, but we involve the employees with the partnering tech companies in our workshop as well. There’s always an instructor, as well as 6–7 mentors that work with the girls.

We also have mentors that work with the girls, so it’s also a bit of this team work and inspiration. Also, the mentors also spend a whole day there to have the girls learn faster and answer questions. If one girl is far ahead, they can give them extra guidance and assignments.

Usually these mentors are guys between the age of 25–40, and some have kids but many don’t. Most of them have never worked with girls in this age group, and they never thought of being mentors. There is so much good feedback from them.

One of the last ones just told us after a workshop for 10–12-year-olds, that he was afraid of this age group because he didn’t know what to do or how to interact with them.

This guy came to the Skool workshop, and he said it was incredible. He just learned how he can connect and how important it is that he’s giving his knowledge and know-how.

Source: skool

It’s also awesome to paint fences or help build a house, but these guys are using their expertise to help these kids, and they can see how it works to change their future. There’s a lot of excellent feedback from mentors like that which I think is amazing.

Is it OK to say you only involve girls? Do people think that it’s discriminative? How do you respond to that?

Szilvi: While I was in the US I was visiting similar organizations. They only focus on girls. I was sitting with all the founders and asking these kinds of questions, and they all said that girls need this kind of environment where they can have positive impressions, empowerment, and positive reinforcement.

It all starts from the beginning when you send the blue and pink welcome cards to the parents. If there is a technical question or interest, parents also have the tendency to tell children, ‘No, don’t do that because it’s a boys thing (or a girls thing).’ Which means that dynamics change when you have a mixed group.

It also depends on what the environment is. For example in our other course, KódGarázs, where we teach both girls and boys, the girls who come there, they are already interested, and that’s a different issue. For the first time, when they meet programming, but they don’t know if they’re good at it or not, it’s critical to have a safe environment. Not because the boys are bad, but if they know a little more, they will answer the questions first or be louder. And we don’t want the girls to be discouraged.

Peter: We like to say that a large part of our life is made up of devices. Phones, laptops, soon smart houses, and this world is designed by men. Today at a tech company only 3–15% of women are involved in the creation of these devices.

So the whole world perception, feelings, and feedback of women are lost.

Take Uber, for example; you know that you can see the guys name, the car type and license plate. And when Szilvi saw that an Opel Astra is coming to get her, the info was just not enough. Somehow for people who aren’t into cars, the color is the first thing that comes to mind. But Uber never put this in the database. They probably never tested it with women, who are less prone to be interested in car models.

Source: Skool

You got inspiration from the US and brought it back to Hungary. What were your impressions — the positive, negative, challenges, something that worked better in Hungary or changed when you brought the concept back home.

We had to find the right model that can work with the Hungarian kids in every way, financially as well. There was no such organization in Hungary doing the same, and our biggest challenge at the beginning was that the parents kept asking, ‘What’s next, what’s next?’

In the US, all these organizations say, ‘Oh, try this, or check out this after school program, and you can keep going there.’ But we just couldn’t say that. And we still can’t because there is no such organization teaching young girls computer science.

It’s still a big challenge, because if we make the interest, then we have to sustain it somehow. Getting the interest is just not enough, and still, isn’t.

When we talk about impact driven projects, there’s always an emphasis on the mission and societal impact. I would be interested to hear what your business model is, and what the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far have been.

Maybe at the very beginning, it was a question of where we would get the money. But after a couple of months, we realized that money is not the issue we have.

The bigger issue is the team itself. And what kind of people we work with, how these people will be involved and enthusiastic about the project, and I think until this point that was our biggest challenge.

How to get those people to become a team that would love to work on the project, and also how we would love them to work on the project. A lot of people applied to work with us for example, but we just didn’t feel the chemistry.

At LogMeIn I worked in an HR position, so I was sourcing all of the talent for the Hungarian side of things, and at that time I learned that:

Technical talent is not the biggest question.

The biggest question is around culture fit and the values and personality you have. Because your personality won’t change in a couple of months, but technical expertise can grow.

Zsofi: I think it’s a big challenge as well how we focus, and how we say ‘no’ to things. We didn’t know how to do that. As Szilvi said before, more and more people started to get to know Skool, and a lot of parents in Hungary are disappointed in the education system.

We got a lot of questions like, ‘Why don’t you do a school, like a proper school, and teach the kids the way you teach programming?’ And there are so many questions coming to this like, ‘We should do this, we should do that.’

I think we had that challenge last year where we lost a little bit of focus, and we had to make sure that we focused on our mission, and we had to be clear. It sounds easy, but it’s not, especially when you’re doing something where there are no other organizations to channel into.

That’s an excellent point, both team and saying ‘no’ have been such themes in this interview series.

Peter: Working as a team without a real office space has been a challenge as well. Where all the 5–6 of us can sit. Without that it’s a challenge to get those people motivated and work.

Almost from the start, it’s been the three of us, and now we’ve expanded to include two more people who have just joined into the story. And we consciously work as a startup from the beginning.

We’re a non-profit but working with for-profit tools, but what’s also important is that we’re operating in a sector where the US is the closest in thinking and perspective. In Prezi to talk about these things, we are all speaking the same language. When you’re a product manager, and you have a million things to do you know how it is.

But in the non-profit sector, there’s a significant lack; many foundations may not have the knowledge on. Like how to communicate efficiently and directly to the person you need to speak with. We’re not going to speak to a butcher shop about something, even if they have millions because the Szeged salami empire is not going to understand why they should support our cause. They spend a lot of time knocking on doors where they won’t even be able to get in.

And one of our biggest challenges is also learning to create a sustainable organization that will work without us. At this point, the way we’re able to hold workshops is if one of us is free on Saturday. Now there’s six of us, and two fix teachers, so with an eight-person team, it’s also less casual. There’s less organic ‘Hey do you have a minute, let’s chat over coffee.’ That’s why we also need an office.

We also feel the good part of this, but the new members haven’t had that experience yet. They weren’t here from the start and don’t yet feel the motivation to do it even on a bad day.

Just as in a startup it takes work to pass on a culture, here it’s a challenge to pass on the vision.

What I would also really like to see this year which is a huge challenge is that we grow to work nationally. So that there are workshops in Nyiregyhaza, Szeged, Debrecen, wherever, and that there could be Skools without the three of us to scale.

Zsofi: That’s a crucial point for us, how we work. We don’t think that because we’re a foundation that that means we should not have a professional website or professional communications.

We still work with a for-profit mind. It’s just that our workshops are for free and we’re not making the money from the girls but from elsewhere, so obviously it’s different, it’s a fundraising business model. But the way we communicate and present ourselves in every document and email is very important to us. You still have customers, it’s still the same. It’s just non-profit.

We see ourselves as more of a social enterprise. We started another project that’s for-profit and there are a lot of discussions about it. Basically, we would like to have a business model where we also stand on our own feet. It’s important to diversify because you have to be aware that there could be changes in our sponsor companies.

We’re still learning a lot.

And. We are hiring!

We are running a programming competition for the girls as well. Last year we did the first round called Scratch Match. This year we want to make it a lot bigger, and next year we want to spread this program to neighboring countries as well.

We need someone who will lead this whole project as well. So advertising, reaching out through Skool, managing everything. And the final part of the competition is to send the best team to the Facebook office in London.

[Skool has now hired an awesome new teammate for this position!]

We like to say that one day we’ll be really proud of the fact that the lead engineer at a huge company will have started at Skool. We don’t see this yet because we’re still quite young, the oldest Skool attendees are just now turning 18.

Zsofi: Beyond teaching the girls we’re also killing a stereotype. Developers are seen as these creatures that live in the dark that eat pizza. There are the kinds that wear slippers to work, but there are rock stars as well. The fact that this is a creative job is totally not widespread knowledge.

This is why we meet with parents as well. Because it’s a totally different generation. 10–20 years ago there weren’t even UX designers or mobile app programmers, and they need to understand that in 10–20 years they can’t even imagine what kind of jobs there are going to be. And if someone can’t use a computer then their hands will be all the more tied.

In the future — do you see more females wanting to program in general? Do you think more programmers creating something of their own in startups or will they prefer the secure and ‘lucrative’ corporate culture?

I think Hungary has a superb reputation in how to teach computer science in the 80s and 90s because they focused a lot on it in the universities. You can see this because there are so many textbooks written originally in Hungarian that transfer the algorithmic thinking, and they haven’t been translated from English.

But we should keep up with the rest of the world because England, Estonia, the US are a lot further. And if a developer would like to work at a startup it’s just not enough. In Hungary, in the school or during mandatory education they just don’t learn soft skills.

That’s the biggest challenge for Hungary. Not computer science because we can get it I guess. In a couple of years, there will be a lot of companies offering computer science after school education if the laws change.

But on the other hand we should focus on soft skills as well, how to communicate and sell yourself.

How to present, how to be confident.

In our summer camps, we have some presentation techniques; we show the kids how a project comes together and try to use those soft skills, but it goes far beyond that. It should be in schools, and kids should have those skills because they need them when they work at a big company or want to set up their own.

Source: Skool

The US is so far ahead. When it comes to repeat startup founders after a failure, Europe is far behind. How many times you want to go on and on and on.

If you were as moved by reading this piece as we were reading it, we encourage readers to follow upcoming developments with Skool, like their Facebook page and get in touch with them if one of the positions sounded like you!