[MUSIC] I'm here with Bethany Koby, from Technology Will Save Us. So you started the company in 2012? >> Mm-hm. >> When we say the company, the brand, what is it that you started? What is it that you sell? What is it that you start a movement around? >> So, Technology Will Save Us, we make DIY kits that teach young people and families how to make things with technology. The kits are all essentially vehicles for education, what we call 21st century skills, so soldering, electronics, programming, design, problem-solving. But we design them around what we call everyday themes, so gardening, cycling, gaming, music, things that kids are already excited about. And we lead with the benefit. We lead with what you can do with the tech, not with the tech. It just so happens that in order to make that thing, you have to learn programming, or you have to learn about circuits, or you have to learn how to problem-solve something to actually manifest this thing you want to make. >> Now, there's 18 people. Ive met some of them, they're quite amazing people. How do you attract people like that to such a small startup? >> I think there's a few things. One, we knew our representing and have a really strong mission and purpose. I think you automatically attract people with values that really want to be a part of building something that's inherently going to try and change the world in some capacity. So, we still have our first employee. She eventually was sitting in my kitchen. She was called the producer, and now she leads up learning partnerships which is pretty amazing. And I think that the fact that we have already mission-driven business has helped us to attract really great kind of people with similar values. I think also, because we're tapping into this area of learning and education. We have a varied design approach to that. We also attract really creative people and then, also because we're talking about young people, we attract people that care about young people and their potential. So, I think we have a lot of ingredients that mainly attract some really great people. And I think if you kind of stay true to that, you continue to do that as you grow as an organization. >> So I've been tracking what you're saying, you've used the word do or make about three times as often as the word learn. And looking around the table that some of these products are not your own and looking at some of the things we have at our home, the chemistry set, the electrical kit, they sort of seem to be collecting dust. What's the trick? I mean those are obviously competitors in some sense to your business. >> Yeah, to some degree. I mean I don't even think we look at those things as competitors because they don't even sit next to us in the places that we're selling. Those things tend to sit in I would say slightly more old school kind of scenarios. Not that we don't love muffins, we're actually selling muffins as well, but a kind of a legacy of what technology was as opposed to where it's going. I think one of the things we're really aware of is that, because we're leading with the benefit and not just the skill, the acquisition of kind of tech skills, that our kits tend to be more in the world of entertainment, and play, and toys, as opposed to just this kind of world of kind of hardcore learning like education with a capital E. And I think we didn't invent the electronic kit. But I think we're reframing it and we imagining it for a generation born with iPads, and tablets, and things that a generation ago didn't have. And I think that requires a very different way of looking at what kit is, how you actually use it, how much you use it, what the kind of peripherals around it with the experiences, really. So, it's about an experience and not just about a kit. >> So one of your colleagues just whipped this thing up here, which looks like a soccer goal or a football goal. >> Yep. >> And, so this one of your electronic kits? >> Yeah, so this is one of our, so our kits range from kind of younger age groups. So four is the youngest age, so this is our electro dough kit. It's electronic play dough. So basically, you make dough in your kitchen, and you make conductive dough. So we talk about what is electricity. Basically, the dough contains salt and lemon, which creates a conductivity. We talk about why that works, so basically bringing kind of science to your kitchen. But then you're using something as simple as dough to basically make LEDs turn on, buzzer buzz, motors spin. You're basically making a circuit. And I think the fun thing about this is for quite frankly a lot of families and a lot of young people, it's the first time they've ever seen an electronic component, may be the first time as a family who talks about electricity, or the word conductivity. >> You mention the word stories, what's a brand story and why would somebody share it? >> So I think there's the story of our brand, of the Technology Will Save Us brand, which brings a sense of delight and a real kind of lowering the barrier of entry to these things being accepted by parents who otherwise wouldn't even consider that this as something they could do. I mean we're selling LEDs and circuit boards in places like Selfridges. That doesn't happen, but I think it's because we've created an ecosystem around entertainment, excitement. It's all based on learning, but that really gives a sense of I can be part of that, which I think is really important from a parent perspective. But I think there's the individual kind of use stories, those the six-year-olds that are building synthesizers. There's the little girls that are soldering and they realize that they're better solderers than their fathers. There's the teachers that are struggling quite frankly to try and bring in technology that's engaging and really empowering for young people and trying to tick boxes on the curriculum. But, doing it in a way that actually means something to the young people. And I think that the creativity that we see with teachers and parents is pretty amazing. Teachers have bought things like our speaker and made whole six-week lessons out of that, where they took the kids to recycling plants to get recycled material. Then that material becomes their exploration for their speakers and they designed brands around their speakers to really say what the proposition is. And they did a demo day for their entire class around why their speakers were the coolest speakers. And that was all about a kind of a broad range of technical skills, but also them having public speaking skills, being able to build narratives. So that teacher was able to kind of parrot with a kind of cross-curricular approach. I think those stories are when we get really excited that we've created kind of platforms for teachers, parents and kids to kind of invent a long tail of stuff and have kind of adventures around tech. And I think those are the stories we get most response [INAUDIBLE] >> [CROSSTALK] And those stories, I guess, bring meaning back to the brand and go back to your purpose as well. >> Absolutely. >> Before i finish, let me ask you one more question. Your own education was also based on kind of action-based or experiential learning. How did some of those ideas feed into the business and given that I'm trying to design the MOOC around action-based learning, what would be your tips and recommendations? >> I did my master's in responsibility in business practice and that was in action research foundation. And I think in the world of startups and businesses and brand building, they use this word agile a lot. And I think we were doing that without really even thinking that was what we were doing. I mean it is what we were doing, but we can't help ourselves but test something, put it in the world, get feedback, iterate on it, make it better. That's kind of so embedded in the way we do things as makers and designers in this business that, yeah, I think that's just kind of the way we approach solving problems and building our organization. I think the challenge when you're that kind of iterative is then creating processes that help you to streamline that without taking the magic out of the unexpected, because that's one of the things that's always exciting. You don't have to have the answer. It's about putting it in the world to get some feedback to then put it back into a loop of understanding. >> Well, great, well that's inspiring and it's an inspiring story, and I hope I can take some of that on board for this MOOC as well. Thank you, Bethany. We're here outside of Technology Will Save Us. And there's really three important messages from this visit. One, it's about the experience. There's no value outside of the customer experience. We'll come back to that. The second is it's learning by doing. It's not learning to do, but learning by doing, and that's really the part where our homework comes in for this MOOC. And the third part is the purpose-led business, and we'll come to that next. [MUSIC]
