VinciU

Disruption has yet to work in the K-12 educational system. Unflexible curricula, outdated standards, the lack of resources for innovation and teacher training, and the shortage of qualified educators hinder students' preparation for the future. Schools need help to adapt and embrace digital transformation.

There is a global issue of ~300 M young people being neither employed in education nor training (NEET), particularly in developing countries. The unemployment rate for young people is, on average, x4, higher than for adults in 2023. It will become even more complex in the coming years due to the rapidly evolving job market driven by AI and technology. Students need career guidance and must develop strong foundations in technical, scientific, and social skills to remain relevant for the future of work. However, less than 10% of schools are into Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TEVT)

Source:

Global Employment Trends for Youth 2022: Report on global youth employment challenges and recommendations. (ILO)

https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_853321.pdf

Dream Jobs? Teenagers’ Career Aspirations and the Future of Work

https://www.oecd.org/berlin/publikationen/Dream-Jobs.pdf

The "Dream Jobs" study analyzes teenagers' career aspirations and how the evolution of work may influence their future careers.

VinciU is a digital educational publisher that helps schools easily integrate technical and vocational educational programs in new fields such as programming, robotics, design, and 3D modeling, among others.

The platform allows a hybrid educational experience by providing on-demand courses and resources for classroom implementation, such as project-based activities for students and step-by-step guides to help any nontechnical teacher facilitate and manage classroom dynamics and students' progress.

This approach relieves educators from traditional burdens such as lesson planning and dictating, letting them focus on mentoring students in practical assignments and providing the existing school faculty with the superpower of teaching new subjects without being experts in that area while remaining protagonists.

VinciU offers flexible and adaptable educational programs that can be incorporated into the school curriculum or offered as extracurricular activities to meet their unique needs. This is particularly helpful for low-income schools that have difficulty finding teachers with specific expertise.

Demo video: https://youtu.be/42dPqFk724g

This solution aims to provide support to low and middle-income schools worldwide to empower young people, with a more significant impact in underdeveloped countries where opportunities are limited. For example, VinciU's initial users are located in Latin America (due to the founder's market knowledge and influence) where over 33 million young people are unemployed, and another 30 million are stuck in informal, low-paying jobs. This disparity in decent employment opportunities leads to discouragement and frustration among the youth, which directly impedes the region's social progress as it often influences their lifelong career paths. In this region alone, approximately 120 million students attend school, with over half having internet access. However, they are currently passive consumers of technology, lacking adequate preparation for the future. VinciU aims is to address this trend by starting at the grassroots level, in a massive landcape - in schools-. Most k-12 educational institutions fail to equip students with the skills necessary to thrive in the ever-evolving job market, now, heavily influenced by technology and AI.

Source: ILO https://www.ilo.org/americas/sala-de-prensa/WCMS_738631/lang--es/index.htm

As co-founders, we bring diverse backgrounds in technology, education, and entrepreneurship, providing a comprehensive perspective on innovation development to solve problems for the new generation.

Our team at VinciU is committed and qualified to deliver this impactful educational solution to our target population. This is due to our proximity and firsthand experience with the challenges faced by the communities we serve. Our entrepreneurial path in education has allowed us to understand the specific needs and incorporate different inputs into the development and execution of our current solution.

Our journey began in 2018 with the Vinci Institute, an in-person STEM school, where we witnessed firsthand the demand for practical, technology-focused education. We grew our school to 350 students by 2019, winning robotics tournaments and building a community of parents eager to provide their children with skills not typically addressed in traditional schools.
When the pandemic hit, we had to pivot to digitalization. We launched VinciU to train teenagers in digital talent, aiming to allow them to enter the tech industry without a college degree. Through our experiences, we gained valuable insights into our students' and their families' needs and aspirations.
Despite initial success with thousands of students enrolled, we recognized the limitations of our business model (because it was expensive) and the need for broader access to our educational offerings. This led us to pivot once again, becoming a school provider to help traditional schools incorporate technology education into their curriculum, making our service proposal massive and accessible.

Since our pivot in June 2023, VinciU has been undergoing a validation phase by actively engaging with schools across LatAm through tens of demos and pilot tests, incorporating feedback to iterate our solution and sales aspects. We have successfully closed deals, which indicate strong demand for our services while validating the necessity and testing the solution in real application cases.

We applied to Solve for the support of the Solver community. Starting up in education is challenging and often lonely, but being part of a large community related to MIT motivates us to apply.

Our solution is innovative because it offers a new way to implement a hybrid and effective learning experience by combining different educational methodologies. This online solution allows any school teacher, regardless of their background, to become a facilitator of new and modern subjects like coding, AI, or traditional subjects like math or science. The platform relieves teachers of traditional burdens such as lesson planning and dictating, providing them with more time to focus on meeting the specific needs of students. It is like a modern vertion of a filpped classroom. 

The theory of change for VinciU's impact is summarized in the following quote: "Students can not be what they cannot see."

Let's work on the mentioned framework!

VinciU's activity is to provide a digital platform for schools to integrate technical and vocational education and training (TVET) into their curriculum.

• Immediate Outputs:
  • Accessible TVET Curriculum ✔: By offering on-demand courses and resources for teachers to easily incorporate technical subjects like programming, robotics, design, and 3D modeling.
  • Teacher Support ✔ : VinciU provides step-by-step guides for non-technical teachers to facilitate classroom activities effectively.
  • Flexibility ✔: The platform offers adaptable educational programs that can be integrated into existing curricula or offered as extracurricular activities.
• Short-Term Outcomes:
  • Enhanced Skills: Students gain practical skills in technical and vocational fields, improving their preparedness for future careers.
  • Teacher Empowerment: Non-technical teachers feel empowered to teach new subjects, expanding the range of educational offerings.
  • Increased Engagement: Project-based activities and interactive learning foster student engagement and motivation for learning.
• Medium-Term Outcomes:
  • Improved Employability: As students get equipped with technical skills at an early age, they get better prepared to enter the workforce or pursue higher education.
  • Economic Empowerment: Access to relevant technical education increases opportunities for decent employment, particularly in underprivileged communities.
  • Reduced NEET Rates: By providing relevant skills and guidance, VinciU contributes to reducing the number of young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET).
• Long-Term Outcomes:
  • Socioeconomic Development: Equipping youth with technical skills fosters economic growth and social progress, leading to stronger, more resilient communities.
  • Lifelong Learning: By helping cultivate a culture of continuous learning, VinciU prepares individuals to adapt to evolving job markets and technological advancements throughout their lives.

Evidence supporting this Theory of Change:

• Third-party research, such as reports from the International Labour Organization (ILO), highlights the importance of technical and vocational education in addressing youth unemployment and skill gaps. Findings from interviews with educators and students can demonstrate increased engagement and skill acquisition through VinciU's programs. Last but not least, the impact evaluations assess the effectiveness of VinciU's platform in improving student outcomes and reducing NEET rates in pilot schools.

VinciU has set specific impact goals for both the short-term and the long-term. In order to achieve our objectives, we rely on data-driven insights to measure every interaction and analyze key metrics. This helps us to make informed decisions and optimize course content for better outcomes.

Our short-term impact goal is to expand our reach to more schools through pilot tests and initial implementations. We will track the number of schools engaged in these tests and implementations to measure our progress. Additionally, we will monitor engagement metrics such as MAU, DAU, retention rates, NPS, course ratings, student projects, and platform usability to ensure we meet our goals.

In the long term, we aim to achieve enhanced employability, reduced NEET rates, and socioeconomic development. We plan to achieve these goals by conducting surveys and interviews and collecting and analyzing long-term data.
We will also use employability indicators to assess skills acquisition, educational achievements, and job placement rates to measure our progress towards these long-term goals. We will also monitor socioeconomic development indicators such as economic growth, job creation, income growth, and improvements in social progress.

VinciU's platform is powered by a web application built on Angular and backed by Firebase for robust infrastructure. It incorporates AI features from OpenAI for personalized learning experiences and feedback. Additionally, VinciU values traditional knowledge systems, blending modern technology with algorithms to add educational methodologies to provide inclusive and effective education solutions.

6 full time

8 part time20 ontractors

4 years

VinciU prioritizes diversity, equity, and inclusion by fostering a diverse leadership team, setting clear diversity goals, providing equitable educational access, creating inclusive learning environments, and committing to continuous learning and improvement.

VinciU operates on a B2B2C business model, where parents buy an annual license for each student, in coordination with the school. We distribute our software to schools through partners or resellers, who receive a share of the revenue. This is an effective way to reach multiple schools at once. Just like an English textbook, our software is mandatory in the curricula, and parents must purchase it.

We aim to secure our first 100 key deals with schools reaching at least 30,000 students, which ensures at least 1M in annual revenue, guaranteeing effective delivery of the promised experience and the return on investment. Sales in the traditional education sector require lengthy sales cycles. We aim to fundraise to grow our commercial team across Latin America, provide outstanding customer support, and hire talented individuals to continue improving our product and content. Even though VinciU is already financially sustainable by charging an annual license fee between $45 and $35 per student, which is 300 students per school on average, having enough clients to sustain our current team (we can show you our contracts with schools). However, to expand and accelerate our impact, we plan to raise 1.5M in Venture Capital funding to support our regional go-to-market strategy and strengthen the project's PMF.