Kiel Start-up Spotlight: TeachPie makes personalised learning possible in everyday school life

For us, in Kiel, school practice, school development and educational research go hand in hand. Our founder works at a school in Kiel himself. We also engage in regular dialogue with the Institute for Quality Development in Schools in Schleswig-Holstein (IQSH). With the Leibniz Institute for the Pedagogy of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (IPN), there is also educational research right on our doorstep, which we would like to engage with more closely in future. At ‘Bildungsraum’, a project run by SEEd and opencampus.sh, we regularly meet teachers who want to rethink the future of schools. We have already presented TeachPie there and have been invited to contribute again. Our dialogue with Kiel’s Economic Development Agency has also been helpful from the very beginning. For us, such close links to people with different perspectives are one of the advantages of our location.

At the moment, we are still using private premises as our offices. However, as we continue to expand our team, we would like to move to larger premises. The Kiel Innovation and Technology Centre (KITZ) is one possible option.

In 2024, we won the special prize in the ‘Innovation in Education’ category at the Schleswig-Holstein Digitalisation Awards with TeachPie. It was a wonderful honour, and the prize money helped us get the project off the ground.

A key professional contribution was the joint feasibility study with the Generative AI Future Lab at KI.SH. This provided us with support in researching and testing AI approaches for our content creation. The business mentors in Schleswig-Holstein have been supporting us right from the start.

In addition, we benefit from brainstorming sessions with KiWi, exchanges and networking through Digitale Wirtschaft Schleswig-Holstein (DiWiSH), as well as our network of teachers and school heads. These many different perspectives help us to further develop TeachPie and our company.

The business mentors in Schleswig-Holstein help us to take a step back from our day-to-day operations on a regular basis.

About once a quarter, we sit down together to review where we stand and what’s important next. In doing so, we repeatedly become aware of things that get lost in the day-to-day. This helps us to set priorities and stay on track.

Within the local networks, we find people with whom we can discuss issues and develop new ideas. This is particularly helpful for us because, as we build up TeachPie, we have to balance educational, technical and business decisions.

So far, we have built up TeachPie mainly using our own resources and a great deal of in-house development work. On top of that, we received the prize money from the Digitalisation Award. For the next phase of development and growth, we would like to secure funding that will enable us to expand our team and further develop the platform.

Our advice is to think carefully about what the funding should enable next. For us, it’s also about bringing people with complementary skills into the team. Capital alone does not solve every challenge. That’s why a partner’s experience and network are just as important to us, as is their understanding of how long changes in the education sector take.

TeachPie isn’t something you can just build on the side. We’ve invested a great deal of time in thoroughly thinking through and refining the platform, both technically and pedagogically. As a result, we now have a very clear understanding of how we can use AI to provide personalised learning support in everyday school life. The challenge was to drive forward marketing, sales and fundraising simultaneously, whilst working with our limited staffing resources.

When it comes to funding, there is the added complication that schools have comparatively lengthy decision-making and implementation processes, whilst we already need to invest significantly in development. We have already held discussions with investors, but have not yet found a partner who is a good fit for our project and our current stage of development. We are looking for someone who, in addition to capital, brings experience and a network to the table and understands long-term development in the education market.

Think your big project through thoroughly, but identify a clear core concept that you can use to present it to the outside world. For us, the intensive development phase was crucial for understanding TeachPie from both a technical and a pedagogical perspective. At the same time, it’s essential to engage with the people who will eventually be using the product.

Seek out people early on who complement your skills and bring different perspectives to the table. We’ve realised ourselves that you can’t do everything at once with the same level of attention. Look for professional experience and make sure you get on well personally. And look for a shared drive: people who are passionate about the idea and want to take it forward with their own ideas.