The 24/7 global primary school - Noam Gerstein (bina School)

EdTech Founders

In this episode: Frank is talking with ⁠Noam Gerstein, the CEO of the bina school - a fully online primary transnational school for kids aged 4-12. Noam started university at 16 in Tel-Aviv, worked for physichians for human rights. Founded, bootstrapped and exited a business at 26. Then did more than 7+ years of global K-6 research that culminated in the bina school.

We talk about: The need to solve serious problems as an entrepreneur and not small consumer problems of discomfort, how building a school takes time, effort and careful adjustment, how entrepreneurship is like eating dirt for a long time, why getting a white male in the room helps for funding ….and lots more.

Outtakes:

• When kids go to a local school, they meet their local peers, and the educators that are available to them are the ones that are in their neighborhood, more or less. In Bina, children can learn with children from the very north to the very south of their time zone. They are matched according to their needs, not according to their location. Also to their educators by the way. And then we see wonders like two kids from very different sides of the aisle or of the wall or of the war learning together every day and becoming best friends. And that's marvelous.
• I think, you know, success would be to walk into a village in the middle of nowhere and that there are children there in multiple aged, in a grandma's hut or whatever, that are all recipients of like the world's best education. That's the dream, right?
• So either you have a strong enough network or enough financial resources to put things off the ground on your own with whatever it takes, and then start when you have something to actually sell. That's a one option. Or you like eat dirt for like four years. And hopefully you have the ability to do both.

The ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠EdTech Garage⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a community for early-stage European EdTech startups where founders can scale up faster through the founder community, matchmaking and specialized resources. In this podcast series we interview startup founders & players supporting early-stage EdTech startups from across Europe. We get straight to the point in 20+ minutes and publish new episodes roughly every month. You can find the transcript from each podcast on the site below.

• Join the community on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠edtechgarage.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
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Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Frank Albert Coates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ehsansation