By Anne Servidad, Altitude Accelerator Communications Intern
Internet and information technology have significantly changed how people live and interact in many different ways. In this ever-competitive world, parents have been invested more than ever in their child’s education and development, from academic studies of reading and math to other sports and art programs. To manage the children’s learning can be a challenging task. On the other hand, with the ubiquitous access of information and knowledge becoming a norm in many of the developed areas, educators and parents are all exploring the method to adopt and integrate technology into the education and classroom practice.
Like many parents, Natalie and Alex Sokoloff, co-founders of KWE Child, have experienced some major challenges with the education of their lovely son, when they traveled and lived in many cities, including New York, Singapore, and finally Toronto. The lack of effective communication between the parent(s) and the school is almost everywhere. It seems disturbing that you know more about your Facebook friend’s day than your child’s day at the school.
When the four founders met in Jan 2015, the sparkling ideas of how to bring technology into the schools and classroom came into form. Each of them brought their own expertise into the design of a brand new application: KWE Child. KWE, which stands for knowledge, wisdom and excellence, is dedicated to provide an intuitive and secure experience to strengthen the connections among teachers, parents and the children, by displaying pictures, messages and other information and data about the child’s learning and extracurricular activities in a simple and organized manner. It allows the parent to receive notifications about the child’s activities like soccer games and school plays. Teachers keep parents informed and engaged with the child’s grades, upcoming tests and assignments. KWE Child App uses an intuitive social network user interface so that there is a minimal learning curve, if any, for the teachers to use it.
At the start of their incubating term at RIC, KWE had just finished their first prototype and has since optimized the user experience and focused on their business model improvement. “The Altitude Accelerator has helped us in pushing the business idea further, through the peer-to-peer discussions, workshops and coaching. In the past six months, we’ve revamped our business model and business plan, pitched to investors both in Canada and abroad”, explained Scott Xie, COO of KWE.
For the first quarter of 2016, KWE hopes to finish tweaking the additional functions of the app in order to expand their target market from private schools to the public school board. The team also hopes to continuously enhance the user experience by providing more intelligent features.
To those young entrepreneurs out there, here’s a piece of advice for you:
“Test your idea, it is very important. The more feedback you get, the more you can improve on the product to make it better” – Natalie Sokoloff, Co-founder of KWE.
We wish KWE all the best on their journey to success as a Altitude Accelerator Incubator Graduate!
