NumberShapes Founder Story
It is not always the case that a startup begins with no business model or plans for monetization. However, sometimes the need and desire to solve a problem will initially override these concerns. Sometimes there is no time to dream bigger that simply getting a job done. Sometimes your end user is sitting right in front of you and will not wait for you to take a long time planning. The advantage to these beginnings is that it gives you feedback on regular basis and allows you to quickly make adjustments as you develop. Such were the circumstances that fueled the initial development of NumberShapes and remain to this day our biggest asset.
It began while I was working at a private learning center for elementary math. I encountered a young student named Rohit who was entering First Grade and already far behind his peers in math. I sat him down and asked “Rohit, what’s 2 + 1...?” He paused for a moment …“I don’t know,” he said. I asked a few more simple questions to see if he was holding back or simply nervous – he wasn’t. Rohit truly had no idea what the question meant or why he needed to know it. The only thing he knew how to do was count. So I drew two dots, then one more and had him count them. It was tedious and didn’t seem to instill much confidence in him either. Symbolic addition was a mystery to him, place value was beyond his grasp and he was becoming more discouraged. To make things worse, my job was to teach three other students at the same time. Something had to change.
Initially, the project was worksheets that allowed kids at Rohit’s level to work independently. They were based on a highly visual way of representing numbers that later became dubbed NumberShapes. The only requirement to begin understanding these exercises was the ability to count. However, I couldn’t just give kids busywork. Parents wanted results and had high expectations of their kids. The exercises had to be rigorous and show a clear progression to numerical fluency. A coworker helped critique and test the material and we quickly agreed that the worksheets would be better posed as tablet-based exercises. After about a year, I met my cofounder who was intrigued by the project and donated some of her software skills to getting the first few apps off the ground. She was also able to provide consultation and encouragement as to how this project could be parlayed into a full-fledged startup.
One thing that really sets NumberShapes apart from other learning software for kids is its commitment to simplicity and minimalism. Every app is designed to look as much like a plain piece of paper as possible. There are no cartoons or fancy animations. We believe that kids are most engaged by having something that helps them understand rather than something that looks like a game. We hope this will also help us get professional educators to take our product seriously. We want to give them something that makes math easier, but also looks like real work. There are a lot of good teachers who are inspired by the art of instruction and excited by the idea of having tools that give them new ways to do it. As NumberShapes moves toward creating more instructional tools, we must have the utmost respect for these educators and their needs.
Unfortunately, selling education software is a tough business. It can also be hard to promote and have confidence in your product when you are always thinking of ways to make it better. One great idea can be the gateway to an even better one and you lose faith what you created initially. However, we believe that this dynamic can be maneuvered to our advantage. We know that there will always be upgrades, new features and improvements. After all, that’s what makes being a developer and creator so much fun. Thus, making our software free and giving our users the option to purchase additional features seems most fair. This also enables us to leverage customer feedback on a rolling basis - one of NumberShapes initial advantages. This means putting our product into the hands of parents, caregivers and teachers so they can see how technology can empower them to help children. It means listening to their feedback just as closely as the feedback received from the many children who used NumberShapes in its beginnings.
We enjoy the feeling of always being “halfway there” and our goal was never to be “done.” The goal is to stay on the path to consistently improving the way we educate our children using technology. We look forward to constantly maneuvering and adapting to the market and our users. That’s what makes it fun. What started as a child in need of help has blossomed into a journey that we hope is far from over. We’re looking for people who share our passion and believe in our product’s ability to grow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd8z52gGVP4&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS1JZMXaeE8&feature=youtu.be
You can meet the NumberShapes team at DC TechDay on October 6th.