Shamyl Bin Mansoor - Education, Technology, and Passion
Founder's Voyage ·
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Transcript
when we were all together in the boot camp, it felt like home, you know, so I was really fed like, you know, these are some of the people that are exactly like me. Our featured speaker today is the co founder and chief technology officer of Ed Tech Company Lernobots, where he's making learning playful, fun and interactive for future generations of leaders and problem solvers. Shemail, it's a great pleasure to have you as our featured guest today. Thank you so much for being willing to share your journey with us. Yeah, thank you, Nancy. And thank you, Spencer, for having me. Good morning, good, good afternoon and good evening to everyone.
We all are from different time zones. So my name is Shemail. As Nancy introduced me, I'm the co founder, one of the co founders of Lernobots. We're an Ed Tech Company started back in 2014. And I'd love to share my experience of how I got started and got interested in, you know, this particular education problem, and how I've been working in this domain for the past seven years, and what are our plans for the future. Back in 2014, I was actually an assistant professor at a university here in Pakistan, and I was teaching to undergrad students. And one of the most interesting things that I found was that I had, you know, kids in my class with different kind of backgrounds. So some of them, you know, were very tech savvy. But there were others who, you know, had never had a lot of exposure to technology. And here I was trying to teach them, you know, courses like programming and data structures and algorithms, and trying to, you know, motivate them to solve problems. But I found this huge gap where, you know, kids did not have kids didn't didn't have any, you know, exposure to technology or tools that we wanted to use. And I found this problem where it was hard to create a uniform learning environment in my class, especially with kids who didn't have exposure to a lot of technology. And I found myself, you know, giving boring lectures. So I wanted to, you know, make it make my lectures more interesting, make them more fun. I 3D printed a few robots, and I tried experimenting with my coding class. And there I found, you know, that kids, you know, even the these those like undergrad first semester students, but they love the course. And then I experimented with a bit of, you know, game design and the very first course where, you know, it's like the 101, that's the CS 101 kind of course where you learn the basics of coding and logic. And I used some different tools where they had to like make games.
But at that time, I kind of realized that it's a bit too late, you know, to do these kinds of experiments. And I started looking into this at the you know, this problem at the school level, where I found, you know, that, you know, that the that the you know, education has been or the classroom has been similar. So if you look at, you know, let's say, let's say the history of flight, so we've gone from the first, you know, flight in 1905, 106 to, you know, landing on the moon in the 60s. And if you look at other technologies in the past, like 100 years, we've got we've had huge developments and thereby leaps and bounds. But education is the same in the past 100 150 years. In fact, there's a very interesting image, where there's a snapshot of a classroom from early, let's say, 20th century. And there's a snapshot of a classroom now and it's exactly the same. So that's where I, you know, I kind of discovered that this is a huge problem. And I got really interested into it. And that's an interesting, this was this was like back in 2014. And I discussed this with my co founder, who was basically a graduate of the same university that I was teaching in.
So he was a former student. And we kind of sat down. And we decided to do something about it. And we designed our first workshop, you know, three different printed a few robots, designed a bit of curriculum invited like everyone of any age group. And we found that the work workshop first workshop was a big success, you know, everybody loved it. And that's when we realized, you know, this is something that we could do. And this could basically solve, you know, the education problem that we have. And, you know, once I started looking into it, I realized, you know, I used to be when I when I was studying, there were certain courses that I did not like, and then there was certain courses I liked. And looking digging more into it, it turns out there are like, you know, there are different kinds of theories available. And there are different kinds of things that you can do to make learning fun. In fact, there's by MIT's professor, the rule is called and it basically enables kids to learn about, you know, blog to make games and you know, create videos through blocks based programming. And I started looking into more of these tools and I found, you know, these tools get are really helpful in making learning fun. And that's we that's when you know, we kind of formally started learn about and started designing our own curriculum started using different kind of tools designing different kids and started working with schools. And that's you know, kind of how I got started into starting the startup.
Thank you so much. That's an amazing story. And I can tell just how passionate you are. I was wondering if you could take us back a little bit in your journey and just tell us a little bit about some of you know, the early mentors perhaps that influenced you to go in this direction and some of your personal development. So that's kind of interesting. When I started it was mostly, you know, we were interested in the in the problem itself. So in the beginning was like really we were on our own. I don't remember, you know, having any mentors at that time. So I was teaching and I was like part time doing this. So if you go back, you know, to the initial years, I don't remember, you know, having any mentors at that time. And if I look at it now, you know, I think that's something that we should have done, we should have, you know, found advisors or mentors with more experience than us that that could have helped us in accelerate in the beginning. But we kind of, you know, learned off the job. So coming from an academic background, so I had a background in engineering, and I did a couple of teaching and, or you know, doing a startup was completely new to me and my co founder. So we kind of learned on the job in the beginning.
That's awesome. And I really loved from your story talking about how you saw this problem. And you, you know, immediately started trying to find ways to fix it by getting other people coming in and experimenting and kids playing. I think it's such an exciting avenue you've gone for this. I was hoping you could explain a little bit more about the learner bots theme domain fusion education model. Yeah, sure, absolutely. So when we started, it was about making learning fun. And as we, you know, started to learn more about this problem, we found that, you know, the traditional education model is all about, you know, teaching subjects independently. So when we study kind of, you know, mathematics, it's like a subject on its own. And when we study, let's say, it's a biology or chemistry, they're like, you know, independent subjects. But there is this new methodology where, which is basically called the STEM or the STEAM approach for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, where you combine these subjects in a more practical hands on hands on manner. So it's all about, you know, creating, like a problem solving mindset, and you can choose different themes. So for example, when we were designing our curriculums, so we created this interesting problem where, you know, the kids had a robot to find water on the surface of Mars. This was like, I think a few years ago, when we were actually designing this, so we had this idea, you know, let's create an environment where kids would we would tell them, you know, they were on the surface of Mars, you have to program this robot, you have to, you know, add a sensor, which and we would place water somewhere and they would have to program the robot to avoid obstacles and find water.
Turns out right at that weekend, there was an announcement by, you know, scientists that they had found traces of water on Mars. So that was like a really fun coincidence that happened at that time. So it's all about, you know, creating a theme based learning environment where you let the kids explore a problem and then you know, give them the required tools and the skill set. And they can actually, you know, start solving those problems. And that kind of, you know, creates that experiential learning experience for kids. And it basically becomes a lot more fun as well. I love that idea. I love how you were talking about turning your passions channeling them into productive hobbies. And I was wondering if you can explain, you know, without giving away your secret sauce, explain a little bit more how you see that LearnerBots really does help kids identify those passions. Yeah, that's a wonderful question. So we believe that every kid needs exposure to different, you know, themes and different domains. And we found that, you know, kids get inspired because of their environments. And we found this problem here in my country that due to limited exposure, kids only go for a few, you know, careers. So they're either becoming engineers or either becoming doctors or maybe joining, let's say, the forces like the Air Force or the Army, because that's some of the careers that they can only see and they only get exposed to. So our idea was to give these, you know, our kids an environment where they can explore different technologies. So and different basically domains. So they can explore making rockets, they can, you know, play with robots, they can create art, and they can use programming languages to create art. And, you know, you know, so that the idea was to make, to make them all these, you know, domains, give them exposure, and then let them, you know, find their own passion. And I'll share some very interesting examples. So there was this girl who was part of our workshops. And when she came in, you know, we, you know, we generally ask a few questions of the kids, you know, what do you want to become?
What are your interests? And she had this idea that she wanted to become a doctor. And once she once she went through art, like for a few months, she had such a turnaround that she exactly knew what she wanted to do. So she wanted to become a doctor. But after our program, she exactly knew, just, you know, finishing after finishing the program with us, she exactly knew what she wanted to become, you know, eventually, and she wanted to become a mechatronics engineer. So we completely changed the, you know, thought process you she wanted to become a doctor, because that was the influence from her home, probably, you know, from her surroundings at home. But once she went to our workshops, she loved robotics. I mean, she loved playing with robots and coding robots. And now she's actually probably, I think she's going to enter university in a couple of years. Yeah.
That's awesome. I really love hearing about other engineers coming out into the field and what inspires them. And it's so cool to know, as you said, like kids, if they're only exposed to a limited number of jobs, they're only going to be able to choose within them. But your approach of expect exposing them to a larger range. Having such a positive impact is very exciting. I was hoping to given the complexity of the education sector, I was hoping to understand what you did to make sure you set up your business fundamentals the right way from the beginning with the competing sort of both ambitions, as well as, you know, for financial success and education, taking care of people in that regard, as well as knowing that education is such a complex field. That's, again, a very interesting question. So coming, you know, starting in Pakistan, education is definitely a very difficult market. And when we started, initially, it's hard to convince schools and school administrators to basically accept this new kind of model. So initially, we had a very tough time of, you know, getting into schools, and we had to get into schools. I mean, we could not get in, get meetings, they would not, you know, kind of understand what we're doing, even if he would get meetings, they would not understand it, they would not want to pay for anything like this. But eventually, we kind of still, so instead of going to schools, we started having our own workshops. So since I was teaching at a university, so what we did was we, and the university had like these teaching labs that were free on the weekends. So we, you know, kind of rented those labs on the weekends, and we started, you know, marketing on Facebook. So we started targeting parents. And turns out parents are very interested in, you know, these kinds of jobs. And that's where we started getting kids in. And so our main source of, you know, let's say, getting, you know, customers was through Facebook marketing. And so one of the things that we did was we, you know, since we are very small company with a very, let's say, four or five employees in the beginning, we just, you know, recorded what was happening in the workshop. So we just took a few pictures. So these were like raw pictures, what's happening, what's actually happening in the workshop over the weekends. And we would just put up put them up on Facebook. And that kind of, you know, became really popular. So people loved, you know, what the kids were doing. The parents love them. And eventually, the parents started pushing their schools, you know, they wanted their schools to start something like this. And then instead of us going to schools, the school started coming to us. That's how our business model kind of evolved on its own. And can you kind of take us through how your business model works now? Because I understand that you're still, you know, working with schools, but I was actually sort of wondering about how it works on a day to day basis for you.
Sure. So when we started, so, so I mean, when we started, we had to do a number of different things innovatively. So we don't have a lot of, you know, STEM teachers or trainers available. And interestingly, in Pakistan, and I think there are other South Asian countries as well, teaching is not a career that many people get attracted to. So the first thing that we did was to kind of hire engineers and, you know, kind of trick them into saying that you're making robots, but we eventually made them like trainers and teachers. So that's one of the things that we did. So this this model that we used to work with was pretty trainer oriented or HR intensive. So it wasn't very scalable, because we had to train talent, we had to teach them, you know, so one of our philosophies is, you know, learning with fun and playful learning. So we had to instill that kind of philosophy into them. And it turns out inside, in fact, we've learned a lot, but it turns out that if you don't have the kind of, you know, fun loving personality, if you're a serious kind of guy, I mean, you're not a great, you don't become a great, like, let's say trainer at learner bots. So we had to find, you know, fun loving people who love doing stuff, who are passionate about this. And we had to, you know, train them to become trainers. However, like three years or three or four years into this business, we realized that this is not a very scalable model. And that's when we started working on a new product. That's an e learning portal for STEM education or STEAM education. And we've taken our learning from our previous business model, and taken that experiential learning and that fun philosophy and put it into this, you know, this product, where kids can actually and schools can actually sign up. And they can execute the same similar similar kind of experiential learning in their schools without having to have, you know, a very experienced STEM. So we basically a gamified learning platform where we use simulators, we've designed simulators for robotics and different other domains. So the model has kind of changed to a SAS based model, which is kind of more scalable than the HR intensive model that we had previously. So this is what we're doing right now. That's awesome. And that's interesting. I love hearing about when companies pivot and what makes the decision, what sort of causes the decision to make that pivot.
I'd love to be to sort of understand a little bit more about how your leadership style has evolved over the course of this process, especially comparing the more hardware, focus time and then more software focus time now. Right. So I mean, so as we were like growing the business, we kind of, you know, had this problem where schools were, you know, big chains of schools. So there are different like, schooling models in Pakistan. So there are private schools and there are government schools. We mostly target private schools. And then there were like schools, there are schools that have like huge chains, they have like 100 to 100 like, and all over the country. And then when we had, you know, when we started having talks with them, and they wanted our product, we just could not, you know, provide them because we just did not have the scale for that. And that's when this realization came, you know, that, you know, we have to find a solution to that. It's still the, I guess, both co-founders, you know, both of us are like, have an engineering background. So whenever we find a problem, we go for trying to understand, you know, how we can find a solution to that. And that's what we naturally realize, you know, this is if this is an HR intensive model, that's not scalable at all. So that's kind of that that made us realize, you know, we have to find a more scalable model. And that's when we kind of change and pivot it to a more digital model. That's kind of an incredible pivot. I have a question, too. I know, you said, um, LearnerBots has existed for seven years, is that right? Yeah, that's correct. That's amazing. So I, I really wonder if, well, you can tell me what do you think you feel like you did? Right? Even if you didn't consciously do it and setting up your, your business fundamentals in the beginning? Right. So I can, I can, I can definitely tell you maybe made a lot of mistakes. If you're doing it right now, even. So there's always this, this, this learning mode that we are in, and what we are doing right. So we are always, always things that we're doing wrong, rather than, you know, thinking of things that we're doing right. So I think we did the pivot was really important. I think that's one of the things that we did right at the right time, because, because that's something we believe would not have, we would not have had, you know, a scalable model. And we would always been limited to, you know, would have been a very small business. I really appreciate your honesty, though. I think mistakes are part of the journey. Absolutely.
Thank you so much. I really do appreciate you giving showing us so much honesty in your answers and really taking the time to dig deep on those things. I know that sometimes it can be uncomfortable, but I feel like it's so much more beneficial for everyone. I was hoping to get an idea of your from your perspective, obviously, the things you're doing with Lernobots is to improve education. But I was hoping from your perspective, what are things in a grand sweeping, stroke sort of thing globally that could be done to improve education? What ways do you think education currently isn't working in how it should? Yeah, again, great question, because that kind of that question kind of lugs into our vision. So what really is happening is that technology is getting, you know, fused with different domains, and the jobs are really changing. And this is going to have a great impact. And if we don't adopt, you know, we if we don't change the way we educate the kids right now, it's going to have, you know, huge, cause huge problems for all of us. And so for example, so we've got, you know, the fusion of technology with let's say, finance is created blockchain, and, you know, cryptocurrency. And similarly, the fusion of technology was with other domains is creating new kind of jobs. And in fact, there are statistics by World Bank and the Economic Forum that tell us that 65% of the jobs that exist to get today, we completely cease to exist. That basically means we don't even know what the future jobs will be. So some of the things that we can do right now is to, you know, these learning environments where kids can actually think skills like problem solving, and communication and creativity. So these are like 21st century skills that we would want the kids to have, you know, experience. Right now, what schools do is they kind of, you know, create an environment that it's all about learning and repeating something, you know, the concept, a certain concept, but that work. I mean, I mean, we know that companies, you know, top tech companies, they don't even want degrees anymore, they're looking for skills. So the exist, I mean, existing schooling method has to completely change. But of course, the change cannot happen overnight. So that's why we are kind of, you know, you know, slowly, these technologies into education. So for example, in Europe, and even I know that in even in England, kids at a very young age are being taught a little bit about coding and problem solving. And that's just that's just a start. And you've got like, you know, after school clubs, so there are not number of tools that schools are using.
But that's, that's just, you know, one of the domains. Personally, we believe that, you know, kids should have access to things like any kind of new technology that comes in. So for example, they should know how to use IoT in solving their problems, they should know how to use robots to solve their certain problems. So it's all about creating that problem solving mindset, because the future jobs that are coming in, you know, we don't know what those jobs will be. So for example, some of the predictions are that some of the jobs will be like an AI. And you know, we don't even have a degree about AI, you know, for AI ethicists, so creating AI ethicists, because AI has a problem. I mean, we know that the current models that we have are causing the AI to make wrong decisions. So we need, you know, people to train for these kinds of jobs, then there are jobs like asteroid mining. So that's something, you know, cited as a very exciting career choice. So we believe, you know, that to the current education system has to change, we need more, you know, more, more activities that enable solving and creative mindset in kids. And I'm trying to make that change. I really appreciate your tangible examples of preparing kids for the careers of tomorrow, you know, I mean, that requires so much creativity on your end to just, you know, staying in the know about how science and technology are evolving and sort of predicting where those things might go. Can you talk to me a little bit more about, you know, the leadership team in your company too, because I do believe that, you know, every great idea could either become an amazing company, or just die, depending on that team. So how, you know, how did your original team come together? And how has it sort of evolved over these seven years? So the original team was two co-founders, and we are still two co-founders, but we've brought in a few advisors. So when we started off with a model that was not a SAS based model, we kind of learned, you know, the hard, how to basically, you know, get more customers and, you know, but it took us more time because we weren't natural to it. In fact, we were a bit natural because I'm the techie guy, my co-founder is the business guy, and he just, you know, he's pretty good at sales, and, you know, with the customers. But now we've gotten more advisors who are helping us with the, you know, the scaling part. So yeah, that's how it that's how it's kind of changed the, you know, so we still we're still two co-founders, but we brought in a number of advisors. That's awesome.
Thank you so much. Based on having brought in a couple of advisors, I was hoping you could dig a little bit deeper into how you can tell if someone would be a good advisor and how you sort of manage that advisor, founder of relationship. Yeah, so that's a very interesting question. So we have a so we have an advisor, he gave us a perspective from the outside. So we will, you know, really focused on, you know, when we were doing the same thing again and again, for such a long time, it kind of became hard to think out of the box. So one of the things was to, you know, this advisor kind of helped us think, you know, especially in our strategy, so you know how to move from, you know, the previous model to the new model, and, you know, helped us understand, you know, the kind of the mistakes that we were making. And we found that to be really, really useful. So I think if you want to find an advisor, find someone who can help you can you can, by the way, be straight. So initially, it was pretty uncomfortable. You know, when someone was telling you what you know, you thought I mean, we thought we were like doing great. But when you when you know, this third guy comes in and tells you know, these are the mistakes that you're making. Initially, it was really uncomfortable, but eventually it helped us learn, you know, the things that we weren't able to see doing the same thing over and over again. So I think, you know, so now I understand, you know, why advisors are really important, you know, especially who have that kind of experience, who have had that kind of experience before with startups. So I think, you know, I hope I answered your question.
I think that was an excellent answer. I think it's one of those things that people don't know super well how like what the advantages are for an advisor and how to sort of manage that relationship. I was hoping I could ask you additionally, about in a more personal sense, how do you manage your work life balance? How do you sort of focus on the work without letting it overflow into the rest of your life? I think I've done it pretty badly. It's, it's been really hard. It's been really, really hard. In the like in the past five, six years, in the initial like three to four years of the company, I mean, balance my life, really affected my personal life. But now I've come to the realization, you know, that you have to have that work life balance. And so it was like, it did affect my life as well. But now I've realized, you know, it's important to make sure that you have to have that work life balance. And, and one of the things that I've found is that, you know, and I've seen it in most successful people, they're like really disciplined. So I'm having a bit of trouble, you know, finding discipline in my life. By discipline, I mean, you know, you have to wake up early, you know, you have to have everything like scheduled. So if you wake up early, you know, you get all the things done in the big in the morning, you know, make sure you, you have some time in the evening for yourself and then for your family as well. So I know, you know, that is important, although it's really hard to implement, it's easier said than done. But you know, trying hard to get that work life balance right. Certainly is. I definitely think that's one of those things. There's really no perfect answer because what we need continues to evolve and change as do we. So I appreciate your honest share. I really do. I was kind of wondering, you know, what your, your future vision is, you know, not just in a learner bot sense, but for yourself as an entrepreneur, you know, is, is there any either related problem or totally different sort of problem that you would like to at least be part of solving at some point in your life? Yeah, absolutely. So right now it's it's learner bots.
It's been this like for the past seven years. But I think learner bots, I've always loved solving problems. And I've just always had this affinity for tech. As me and you know, we're talking in the beginning, you know, I love playing with tech toys, you know, I still do. So I mean, learner bots helped me, you know, we backed a lot of kids from Kickstarter, when we wanted it, there was this new robot coming out and then design our own robots. So I really love solving problems. And I think the skill set that I've learned, you know, the skills that I've got right now, I would really love to, you know, use that to solve more problems in the world. So for example, I would love to solve the problem of poverty, you know, the food problem, eventually. So all the you know, the major, the world is facing, like, you know, that kind of everyone, especially my country. So I would love to, you know, attack those problems once, you know, I'm not working in education, and sometime in the future. That's awesome. And I think those are the kinds of problems that people really need, like we need as a society, more and more people looking into.
But I also agree that education is one of those problems that if we don't have improvements to education constantly, then we'll have generations that get left behind by the technology. Now, I believe you attended the 2019 bootcamp. I was hoping I could ask you about that. What prompted your interest in attending the MIT bootcamp? And were there any tools that you found from the disciplined entrepreneurship framework, which were particularly useful? Yeah, absolutely. So one of one of the reasons was the community was, you know, getting access to, you know, so I'm really inspired by, you know, the professors working at MIT. So one of the reasons was, you know, you could attend their lectures over there. So I love that part. Initially, it was that excitement, you know, you get to work with, you know, the MIT professors, you get to attend their lectures. And, you know, of course, you can learn a number of things from them. However, the thing that I most loved about it was when we were all together in the bootcamp, it felt like home, you know, so I was really, you know, these are some of the people that are exactly like me. So that's one of the most interesting things. And I love that. And one of the things that, you know, I really learned from that is that before attending that I used to, you know, study a lot about, you know, how to get access to customers, how to talk to customers I read, I had read a few books, we had done things like that. But, you know, in the first task that we got the assignment, it was, you know, talking to the problem that we're sharing and like, let's say clients. And that's, and that day, I realized, you know, it's not that difficult, you know, because I mean, that we should go and talk to customers, but I really did not do that. I mean, we found ways where we could understand what the customer wants, but directly talking to them understanding what they exactly want.
We were not doing that correctly. Yes. And I really appreciated what you were saying about, you know, kind of, I'm going to poorly reword this, but you know, kind of meeting other people and feeling like you're among your people. I think that is a feeling that many of us have, have indicated and we're hoping that we, you know, we have actually brought in some additional entrepreneurs that have been referred by friends to this founders voyage community. And we're hoping that this has has that same sort of feeling. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm hoping in fact, I think you guys are planning on something like physical meetups, because, because I think, I mean, the online thing does work. Physical meetups are the best thing ever. And it's that community when you talk, you know, meet people physically, in real life, that's that's, that's where the fun comes from, right? Yeah, honestly, that's kind of where the fun started that launched this community. So we'll, we'll have to talk about that. I don't know what the timeline will be for that. But I'm very interested in hopeful about doing that at some point.
Yeah, I definitely think we're interested in doing more live events. I have a question from one of the listeners. Dear Shamail, I'm very enthusiastic to hear about your personal story and about your successful educational startup. I have a few questions for you. One, what kept you going and staying optimistic the moment you realized the schools did not accept your product and brace your vision up until the moment when parents suggested it to the schools? For example, did you have another job at the time? Was it sufficient financial resources, etc. I'm wondering because most startups tend to fail at that specific point and your perseverance and thinking outside of the box mentality turned into success. Two, at what point during your success did you quit the teaching position? Three, are you planning on globally scaling your startup?
Love to hear these answers, Shamail. So initially, when we had trouble with acceptance from schools, I think it was the initial time we were really passionate about what we were doing. And it was also the excitement of first time founders. So I was a first time founder. So I was really excited, I guess the excitement and the pure optimism got us through that difficult time. Because you know, you know, as founders are mostly very optimistic, the thing they can, you know, they can solve all the world. So I think that got us through that. And sometimes we did have low moments. But somehow, you know, one thing or the other kind of motivated us back on track. So for example, I remember, we're having a downtime. And I don't remember the exact reason maybe we had a, you know, there was there was something. But then we got an email from MIT, actually. And they had seen one of our, you know, weekend camp that was covered by hackaday, which is a very popular, you know, website, and they wanted to put it up on on their own web. And that got us excited.
First, I thought that was like, you know, that spam mail, it was a real email. So that got us really excited. And then when you work with kids, I mean, I mean, they have got this energy that if you if you start talking with them, if you start, you know, working with them, you start seeing them, it just, you know, it just keeps you going. So that's one way that was one way of doing it. Regarding financial resources, so that's a great question. So I was also teaching. So I was like doing this part time and I was teaching. And this was like four years into Learnerbots till I did that. And when it was eventually stayed, then I quit my teaching job and took on, you know, Learnerbots full time. So you're definitely right. So it was it was not, you know, able to sustain salaries for the but it was we were able to the company itself. So as founders, we weren't taking any salaries or kind of sustaining on our savings. And I was sustaining through my teaching job. But the company was able to sustain itself through that period.
Yeah, thank you for explaining that. And actually, you hit on her second question, which was, at what point during your success did you actually quit your teaching position? And her last question is, are you planning to globally scale your startup? So as I mentioned earlier, that we pivoted with our offline model to a more scalable SaaS. And we we would right now by creating partnerships. So we have created a chip in the Middle East, we have created another partnership in the UK. And we are in talks with another partner in the US where we are creating, we are, you know, finding like minded people within the edtech domain. And you know, you know, you use our product already in, in, we want to add a new there, you know, list. And that's, you know, our plan of scaling right now. So we've already launched one of the models in the UAE. And in the UK, you know, working with our partners to find schools and, you know, pitch our product to them. That's awesome.
I'm looking forward to seeing them whilst I'm talking to people here in the UK. I think it's very exciting. Now, I do notice that we're just about at the hour point. We at the end of each of the talks, we tend to ask this one question. And we do want you to interpret it as very free form, take it sort of in the way that best suits you. But the question is, what do you think has been the best lesson or takeaway from your journey so far? Slash, do you have any words of wisdom that you might want to leave with us? That's a good one, because I think I've learned a lot of things during the course of this journey, learned a lot of different things, you know, but loved every part. So there have some downs. And I think that will kind of, I'm not sure if I can share a lot of wisdom, but that kind of, you know, answers the second question as well, that there are going to be ups and downs, a lot of ups and downs. But if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you're going to quit. Because some days are like, really, really, you know, you're really, really down.
And some days you're really excited. So it's a really, you know, up and down journey, passion that keeps you going, you know, so if you have the of what you're trying to, you know, achieve, I'm pretty sure you're going to make it. Well said. Yeah, I can continue to feed that passion is something that I could see is important to you too. So thank you so much for everything that you've shared with us today, Shabayel, both personally and professionally. We're always inspired walking away from these conversations. And we really hope that you are too. We really appreciate just how much time you took and also your patience with the technical hiccups today. So thank you again. Thank you. Thanks a lot for having me. I think I really loved sharing my journey. And I hope everyone kind of can learn something from it. Hey, yeah, show me before before we finish off. Do you have time for one last question? Sure. No, why not? Ah, thank you. Thank you. My name is Moheed. I'm also in Edtech. I wanted to ask you so I know you're working in Edtech in high school, in particular in the STEAM area. Now, from my experience, what I heard a lot is that when you have STEAM products and you're approaching high school, one of the biggest barriers tends to be teacher training, is that you can have great content, but the teachers are not able to deliver it. How did you guys come and like solve that particular issue? That's great.
And that's definitely one of the major hiccups that does happen. So in our platform, what we've done is we've enabled the teachers. So we don't expect the teachers to be STEAM experts. But what we've done is we've created content for teachers to conduct these sessions. So we launch in any school, we do train the teachers. And specifically, we look for teachers with an IT background. So there are like ICT teachers in different schools. And we, you know, we kind of try and find those teachers in a school, but we still create content that any teacher can actually conduct a session. And on our platform, a week, so it's like instruction based. So follow instructions and do things and things happen and they start explore and start exploring and you know, they start experimenting and learning, whereas the teacher kind of acts more of a facilitator. So we've tried to kind of remove the teacher as the main, you know, stakeholder when they're teaching STEAM, specifically with a new platform. And but we, we are creating content so the teachers can, you know, so they have all the lessons, they have the lesson plan.
So we're, you know, kind of trying to make the life of a teacher really easy. So let's see if it's going to work. Okay, but the time to solve this, like this. That's that's really great. Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah, thank you so much. Hey, I think we're gonna have to connect you to offline too. I think I'm really glad that you could join today, Mahib. I know it's a lot later where you are. So thank you. You know, I have sent you a LinkedIn request. I would love to talk, talk to you more later on. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'd love to talk. Right. Thank you so much, guys. It's been great to come back and join again. Yeah, thank you. And as I said to Shamyla in the beginning, this is exactly why we're motivated to, you know, continue what what I kind of term a cooperative learning experience. So let's definitely keep these conversations going offline. And we look forward to having those of you available to join us next week. So have a great week, everyone. And have a great morning, afternoon and evening ahead. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you so much, Shama. Have a great day. You've just finished another episode of Founders Voyage, the podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. The team at Founders Voyage wants to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We hope you enjoyed your time with us. And if so, please share this with someone else who might enjoy this podcast. You can also support us by leaving a review on Apple podcasts and Spotify, and by donating to our Patreon. Outro music today is Something for Nothing by Reverend Payton's Big Damn Band.