We also met advisors during the challenge who went on to invest in Kami later. Jordan: We’ve had a lot of great support in New Zealand – We got our start with the Velocity $100k Challenge where we met our mentor Bob Drummond – he’s now Kami’s Chairman and Chief Revenue Officer. What do you think have been the benefits and challenges of building a startup in New Zealand? Teachers have reported that children with special needs, such as dyslexia, benefit immensely from the tools within Kami that help children improve their reading and comprehension. One area I am particularly passionate about is the impact this is having on students with special needs. We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from teachers who have recognised the significant time savings and uplift in active, real-time participation in the classroom using Kami. However, Kami has a set of tools to allow us to engage with the text in a way that makes reading easy. Typically static documents has meant English language learners, such as myself, have had to struggle with reading. We use video, audio, and text to speech tools to help students engage with the content, and help with their comprehension. Hengjie: Kami allows teachers and students to engage in a more collaborative and engaging classroom experience – a shift away from the current one-way dialogue from teachers to students.įor example with English teachers, we’re bringing previously static documents to life by making traditional worksheets or readings interactive. How is Kami changing the face of education in the digital age? And how do you think it can improve the learning process for both students and teachers? We have really learnt how much the ecosystem you operate in plays a role in business success. The American schools was faster at integrating tech – something that is crucial for a tech startup.
#All about kami app software#
It hasn’t been without its challenges but launching into North America, where schools have more mature software policies and can more easily adopt our product, has made all the difference for Kami. Unfortunately, schools in NZ weren’t as mature as the rest of the world when it came to integrating tech into the classroom. We spent our first year struggling to find a product-market fit with the theory that growing in our backyard is the best option for us. Hengjie: Surprisingly, launching into New Zealand was a much bigger challenge than North America. What has been your biggest challenge moving into the North American market and how have you worked to overcome it? One of the things that has helped us get to where we are now is our combined focus and determination to enrich the lives of teachers and students around the world. Now, five years on, we have won awards, employ a number of staff, have great investors and the business is growing rapidly. We all met while at uni, recognised the need for better and more collaborative note taking and created a product to meet that need.
Looking back to when you first started University could you have ever imagined that you would start a company like Kami? What do you think has helped you the most to get to where you are now?Īlliv: I’m not sure if any of us could have imagined the future but our time at the University of Auckland had a direct impact on what we do now. We sat down with the co-founders to find out more about their journey so far.
Kami’s cloud-based software application allows teachers and students to annotate, view, edit and collaborate on digital documents in their browser and complements existing office suites, cloud platforms and learning management systems. They have won numerous accolades, most recently winning the Company-X Best Emerging Business at the ExportNZ Awards. The company has now expanded to cater for over six million users worldwide. After taking their venture idea through the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Velocity programme the business has grown exponentially. The idea came from humble beginnings as a way for co-founders Alliv Samson, Jordan Thoms and Hengjie Wang to be able to collaborate on their own university study notes. Kami is transitioning classrooms into the paperless world.
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