How Sari Hurme-Mehtälä CEO And Co-Founder Of Kide Science Raised $3.3M To Build A World Class EdTech Platform For Early Childhood Science Education?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä, CEO and Co-founder of Kide Science, has 15 years of business experience globally and locally from media, retail, design, and ICT industry. She has worked in big companies´ marketing and sales positions but felt that she wants to do something more meaningful, especially with children, after becoming a mother of two little scientists.

In 2013 Kide Science founder Dr. Jenni Vartiainen began researching science education of 3-6-years-old children at the University of Helsinki in Finland. The empirical part of her study called for setting up a science club.
Researcher Jenni Vartiainen, teacher Aino Kuronen and business person Sari Hurme-Mehtälä founded Kide Science in December 2017 due to the huge demand brought about by the popularity of this new innovative pedagogical model and engaging science lessons.

Now Kide Science is growing globally with kindergartens, learning centers, and other partners.

Kide Science helps educators and parents support young children’s scientific thinking through play-based learning and storytelling.

In an exclusive interview with AsiaTechDaily ,Sari Hurme-Mehtälä says:

“Choose your battles.” I think this advice goes for both entrepreneurship and parenting. There are so many things you want to do and a lot of what others say you should do. You have limited time and resources, and you should focus and choose between the things, every day. In the Education sector, the product should be strongly pedagogically justified and validated. In addition to pedagogy, the exporter and team should have a deep understanding of, for example, learning theories, educational policy, and the field of education in general.

• Do what makes you happy! If something doesn’t feel right, change it
• You don’t need to be the best in class, to do great things in the future. The more important thing is to try and learn about it
• Dream big, but have small and achievable goals in the journey to build self-confidence & I can do it attitude in yourself

Read on to know more about Sari Hurme-Mehtälä and her journey.

https://youtu.be/h2ktbjwtwLs

Please tell me about your personal background, and What motivated you to get started with your company? 

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: I have always had a small dream of starting up a company, but I felt that I needed to have some fantastic innovation, not that I just wanted to start a cafe or shop. I have also had a target in my mind that I would love to be the CEO of a company. After gaining business experience in sales and marketing positions for big media and ICT companies, I felt I wanted to do something more meaningful, especially after having two kids. When we were pumped into our two other founders Jenni and Aino, while looking for a third founder for Kide Science, I felt that it was a dream come true! In 2013 Kide Science founder Dr. Jenni Vartiainen began researching science education of 3-6-years-old children at the University of Helsinki in Finland. The empirical part of her study called for setting up a science club. Researcher Jenni Vartiainen, teacher Aino Kuronen and I as a business person founded Kide Science in December 2017 due to the considerable demand brought about by the popularity of this new innovative pedagogical model & engaging science lessons. So we had customers and need already before we had our official company.

What is your current main product, and can you share any previous product pivot story to the current product? 

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: We discovered the best pedagogical model to inspire and engage young children to love science and learn science process skills from the research. After founding the company for business, we just have tried to find the best scalable solution and business model that helps to spread the Kide Science for educators and parents. Our customers need guidance on how to do hands-on and engaging science education with storytelling for young children. First, we trained all teachers face-to-face and did not have any platform but shared pdfs as lesson plans, but we still noticed the significant need for our resources no matter how we shared them. That is why we even have books and TV shows in Finland. Then we tested our content and resources sharing through other platforms, but quite quickly saw that we should do the platform for our and customer user needs. So we launched our current core product in late 2019. And now we just launched the product for parents. You can test our platform for free from our website, no matter if you are an educator or a parent of 3-8-years-old. 

How much money have you raised in total so far? When was the recent funding round? 

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: In May 2020, we raised $1.8M from a first-ever EdTech VC from Nordics, Sparkmind.vc. That has been a bit of a pattern for us as we either have been the first investment or last new investment in funds. In total we have raised $2.8M + $0.5M grants. In total, we have 16 different investors from 6 different countries. 

What were the internal decision processes in determining when to begin fundraising, and what were the logistics for this? And how many investors have you met so far, and how did you meet these investors and which channels worked best for you?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: We did not pay any salary to ourselves during the first year but tried to find business opportunities and get revenue immediately from customers. That helped us with our first fundraising, which we decided immediately to have since day one. We decided to take the route of getting not only investors with money but the ones that bring help that has been the right path to us. When we got our first investor, Reaktor, we got a lot of support and advice from their hundreds of employees, which I now feel has been one reason for our success. So our first investor was CVC with a vast network, and they helped us in the next fundraising round also. We have always used warm introductions, and we have been lucky to get meetings with investors whenever we have wanted. The bigger thing for us has been which investors are the right ones and who understand the education sector. We have been lucky as many investors have contacted us. The biggest thing for this is that you have to be active in PR and networking in the startup world, especially in your sector, which is EdTech and social impact. In total, we have talked (email, in-person, video call) with over 100 investors, and 16 of them have decided to invest in us. We talk every month with investors even if we are not actively seeking funding at that time, and it helps the business to get feedback all the time. 

What are the biggest challenges and obstacles that you have faced in the process of fundraising? If you had to start over, what would you do differently? 

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: I think the best advice is to start fundraising today. It always takes more time than you think, and the best time is to be in touch with investors when you are not yet in need of money and help. 

What are your milestones for the next round? And what are your goals for the future?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: Our goal is to tackle this Covid-19 pandemic, not only for us but also for our customers with school closures. We try to make this challenge to a massive opportunity for us and grow faster. We also want science education to be more firmly integrated into early education, so children from different backgrounds would be even more equal in adopting a scientific way of thinking, which would, in turn, benefit our society.

How have you attracted users, and with what strategy have you grown your company from the start to now? 

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: Being a thought leader in early childhood science education has been the most significant help for us. It has been clear that years of academic research and early childhood science education in the founding team have helped a lot. Most of our customers from kindergartens and learning centers contacted us as they had heard our keynote or read about our founder’s research findings. Also, we were lucky to be approached by big companies to make cooperation projects (TV Show and Books series), which have gained a lot of PR and Brand Awareness in Finland. Now we try to spread the word about Kide Science pedagogical model internationally that it even exists and how easy it is to start with young kids. 

Which has been the best marketing software tool for the growth of your startup, and why? 

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: I would say Mailchimp has been the most used for us for now, but we have just started with Hubspot, and it seems to be the best tool now for us to help our growth marketing. But with Hubspot, it helps a lot that we now have three growth experts in our team who know that platform very well, which allows us to achieve the best benefits of HubSpot. 

What do most startups get wrong about marketing in general?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: Everything you do is marketing. Marketing is the thing that drives truly scalable growth once the product or service is reliable. But before you have the product-market fit, you should not spend a tremendous amount of money on paid marketing or outsource it. Try and learn, fail fast, and do not take too expensive risks. Meaning that you would pay a massive amount of something to just test if that works.

How do you plan to expand globally?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: We have started abroad already and continue to find the best growth and cooperation partners for us. Like we now started a collaboration with TCL Communications, where Kide Science is preinstalled in millions of their new kids’ tablets. We also actively seek new kindergartens, preschools, schools, and learning centres that need our educators’ solution. That lead generation process is, of course, planned to be highly automated. Now we have the Finnish, English, and Chinese solution, so naturally, we target those regions and users who can use our platform with those languages. 

What are the most common mistakes companies make with global expansion?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: I believe it depends so much on what global expansion means at that time. We had centers abroad already after our first year, but we are still looking at the best international expansion model. In general, I believe it is the fine line between listening to your customer and not making every little thing differently for every customer. The best way to test different markets is to do it with systemized growth marketing. What does it require to get a customer, and in which market you see the most significant demand and need? 

How do you handle this COVID-19 outbreak situation for your company’s survival in the future?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: One of the critical risk management for us was to get money in the bank account as none of us know how long this pandemic will affect businesses. Gladly we got funding despite pandemic and also grants to develop our product for Covid. So we did many things to tackle this situation. One of them was developing and launching our platform suitable not only for teachers but for remote learning and homeschooling with parents. In a really short time, we have also closed big international cooperation deals for this new solution. Now we see this decision was not only for Covid but also for our future business despite the pandemic effects.

What are the most common mistakes founders make when they start a company? 

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: I would say the big mistake is to spend a massive amount of time and money on building your product before you have tested it with customers, and someone is willing to pay for it. Launch the product or idea for testing when you are a bit embarrassed about it. Also, I would say it is crucial to have a co-founder share the whole roller coaster with. It also helps mentally, not only for the business.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And What advice do you have for someone who is interested in doing similar things like yours or in a similar direction?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: “Choose your battles.” I think this advice goes for both entrepreneurship and parenting. There are so many things you want to do and a lot of what others say you should do. You have limited time and resources, and you should focus and choose between the things, every day. In the Education sector, the product should be strongly pedagogically justified and validated. In addition to pedagogy, the exporter and team should have a deep understanding of, for example, learning theories, educational policy, and the field of education in general.

What are the top-three books or movies (TV series) that changed your life and why?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: I think no movie or book has changed my life, but many have inspired me. 

Business for Punks by James Watt inspired me to think about how everything you do is marketing. I have to also highlight our own science TV series ‘Tiedonjyvä’ in Finland with national TV channel YLE. That has kind of changed my life as it is such a big part of our company’s story to offer every child in Finland, for free, the opportunity to be like a scientist. 

How do you keep yourself motivated every day?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: People say to me that my superpower is optimism, and I think that has helped me a lot. As an entrepreneur, you have many obstacles, but you still have to believe in your company, the mission, and its future. One thing is that you always remember to celebrate the smallest wins also with your team. It is the same with my kids, and I try to motivate them to be proud of the tiniest things they do well. I am not that good with meditating, but the best meditation for me is creating something, which is why I love to paint. That gives me motivation also, and I can share my inner feelings into the canvas. 

What are the top- three life lessons that you want your (future) sons and daughters to know? 

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä:

• Do what makes you happy! If something doesn’t feel right, change it
• You don’t need to be the best in class, to do great things in the future. The more important thing is to try and learn about it
• Dream big, but have small and achievable goals in the journey to build self-confidence & I can do it attitude in yourself

What would you like to be remembered for?

Sari Hurme-Mehtälä: I would like to be remembered as a person who impacted many kids’ lives with her company and helped other startup founders in their journeys by sharing the learnings.

You can follow Sari Hurme-Mehtälä here.

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