In the third episode of the podcast, we talk to Karol Górnowicz - the president of Skriware, who was included in the Forbes "30 under 30" list - the most outstanding young entrepreneurs in a given year.
From the podcast you will learn about the modern educational standard based on new technologies that Skriware wants to implement in primary schools. How will this affect our education system? What can young generations gain from this? What will we, as a society (and entrepreneurs) gain from this?
If you would like to check out other episodes of the podcast, please visit below:
Odcinek 1 - Czym jest zewnętrzny dział R&D?
Odcinek 2 - Jak pomysł zamienić w urządzenie elektroniczne?
For those who prefer to read rather than listen, we have prepared a transcript of the entire episode.
Hello Inquel Talks. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably looking to increase your competitive advantage by using technology, electronic devices, and software. If so, you've come to the right place. In this podcast, we will talk about the latest trends and technological solutions that will help you increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your business. This podcast will also include practical tips and advice that will help you fully use the potential of technology in your company. Inquel Talks is conducted in simple language, so you don't have to be an engineer to use it. Our goal is to help you better understand how technology can help you build a competitive advantage. Well, let's get started.
[T]: Good morning, welcome to another episode of Inquel Talks. This is Tomek Kowcen, and today my guest is Karol Górnowicz, president of Skriware. A man of many talents. On the one hand, one could say, and I will say it with full conviction, because I saw the issue of Forbes where he was included in 30 under 30, i.e. 30 of the most talented, most promising Karol?
[K]arol Górnowicz: Probably the most outstanding ones at a given moment.
[T]: Good thing it was you who said it. The most outstanding young entrepreneurs in Poland. Karol, thank you for being here, but above all, thank you in advance for, I hope, cool experiences that you will share with the listeners. So I would like to welcome you once again. Hi Karol.
[K]: Hello, Tomek. Hello everyone, it's my pleasure to be here. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
[T]: Karol, I would like you to tell our listeners a little more about what Skriware is, what the company you run, which you are introducing to the stock exchange, does?
[K]: Uj, such an idea actually existed to appear on the stock exchange. Well, maybe just a little denial and then I'll get to the point, to the point. However, we have no pressure. This is not our goal, to appear on the stock exchange. It was an idea, the idea was rejected because the climate is inappropriate for these decisions. Besides, it can be seen from public issues, the trading floor is dead. However, we do not rule out this option, for now we are doing our own thing. And what we do is what is our domain. Well, at this point we have already come a long way. I can tell you about it here too if you're interested. However, at the moment we are providing what I like to call a new standard, a new educational system for primary schools, at this moment. Which shows teachers how to use a combination of 3D printing, robotics, design, electronics, some basics of engineering, to, on the one hand, implement this old, bad but necessary curriculum approach, but on the other hand, and what is more important, introduce engaging, interesting, provocative , new teaching methods. So that children can have fun at school and learn more effectively. Learning how to cooperate with each other, develop soft skills, and at the same time learn programming, design, all those technical, hard and soft skills that are, well, very useful on the labor market in the 21st century. So our product is simply a laboratory, it is a system, as I mentioned, that combines hardware, hardware, software, but also content. Content is a very important element. And the service, the support service, implementation, and customer care, this is also an important element of the whole. And outside there are printers, robots, blocks and all sorts of things, these are the most important things in terms of hardware. However, the whole binder is a platform for teachers that introduces them to this technology, step by step, which gives ready-made recipes for classes, activities, presentations, all the things that teachers need. And finally, it encourages experimenting and transferring the burden of education and even responsibility for this educational path to children. And thanks to this we have the right balance: on the one hand, we save teachers' time on preparing for lessons, we show how they can delegate this responsibility and, let's say, part of the teaching process, to group work. Well, and in the end, they develop their competences, become better educators, better mentors, and the children simply feel the flow and feel the need to come to school.
[T]: It really sounds great, but we have the disadvantage that the listeners can only hear us and if we tried to visualize this system in some way, this laboratory, this hardware, this software, software, applications. If you could say two more words about what these students receive as part of this hardware, system. Let's try to name it, what is it, for example scribot? How technology in the form of a printer translates into greater satisfaction and smiles of students and makes them want to come to school.
[K]: Sure. I'll start with the software, this platform for teachers. This is the teacher's first experience, logging in to our database, it is a very simple website with ready-made lesson plans, short exercises, downloadable materials, attachments, presentations, cards, everything a teacher needs. And there, for example, there is the topic of the circulatory system. So we can show the circulatory system in the textbook, we can also, what we propose, choose a model from the library of 20,000 models that we also provide, print a heart model, for example, or a vein model, to see what it looks like. What is the difference between a valve, for example, and an artery, and what effect does a vein have? These models, by the way, can be printed between classes, because all you have to do is print them overnight, pick them up and that's it, and we have a ready topic. For this we can place a robot, precisely scribot, this is our robot composed of a construction system that can be programmed for this purpose. And the robot can, for example, emit oxygen and move along a drawing drawn on a piece of paper - because we are also talking about such traditional accessories - of the circulatory system. It can pretend that it transports oxygen, thanks to which children learn, ok, we have a printed model of the heart, they learn about the structure of the heart, they look at the human structure, they understand how it works, they can touch this 3D model with their senses, understand an abstract concept made of paper in a material form . And in a creative way, I don't know, to use the robot, learning how to program the robot, how to visualize the robot as transporting oxygen in the circulatory system, in the body. So this is an example of a lesson that can be taught. We also have hundreds of such different activities. I also really like to show the structure of an animal plant cell, something like, I don't know, an aquatic cell, some mitochondria, as we know it somewhere. But if you touch it and feel that there are such things here, it is proven that these concepts are remembered much better thanks to such sensory feeling. Besides, there are memory techniques based on feeling and being, and in a sense, visualizing it. The key is to combine 3D printing, these models, 3D design programs, which we also provide, and robotics. Robotics, well, you can talk about it to Lego, a bit like we have something there, we assemble blocks, but we can also program it in a mobile application, on a phone, on a computer. Teach MicroPython, Python, and other popular languages. But finally, our technological twist is that we can still 3D print all these robots. This means that we can print not only models, such as educational and didactic ones, but also the robots themselves, so combined with all this, we can basically talk about endless application possibilities.
[T]: They teach certain skills in a practical and, above all, engaging way. That's where the issue of smiling when coming to school and to lessons arose, right?
[K]: Exactly. You said it exactly. Because it's also like, I don't want to say too much on this topic, because the issue of AI and this GPT chat, which everyone is talking about, is very interesting, I am analyzing this topic, how it will affect the education system. However, as this example shows, the times of such a standard exam, essay and pass rates based on some reference to one template, simply must pass. This is no education, it doesn't teach anything. This does not leave a lasting, valuable mark on the child. So I see a big opportunity in this AI to increase the development of soft skills. The teacher's ability to conduct and control the dynamics of the class. We show how to do it and we have ready-made subject lessons as well as various cross-curricular projects, right? However, this chat shows that you cannot refer according to the exam, one standard. This education should probably start, first of all, with this involvement, with children asking questions and being curious. That in their extra time outside of school they simply explore this topic. If this happens and we inspire a child to follow his own path and discover his passion, right? He developed them at school, defined what is interesting for her and for him, so that's great. This is what good education should be about.
[T]: I absolutely agree. And for those of you who are wondering what GPT chat is, I would answer that it is the use of artificial intelligence to, to a large extent, create written content. It works surprisingly well. In a sense, after recently releasing it to the public, this is not just my opinion, from what I saw, many people using it were surprised by how well it writes content, including: college essays. To such an extent that professors are unable to recognize whether it is content written by the student himself or by artificial intelligence.
[K]: Just give the command, write and paraphrase what you wrote with the mouth of, I don't know, a high school student, for example. And he will do it, he changes it, he adjusts the wording in the right way. Someone compared it to a revolution similar to the invention of the font or the Gutenberg machine. I wouldn't go that far, but it's a huge revolution.
[T]: Everything is ahead of us. Karol, we know each other a little and I know that the road that Skriware has gone through since you joined is, I don't want to say a bumpy road, but a road in which the model and the business use of technology have changed, literally in a few words. Can you tell us where this educational idea came from and what Skriware was doing before you joined?
[K]: Well, let's look at the time, it's 2015, that's when Skriware was created. The founding, initial idea was to create a 3D printer with children as users in mind, to be used at home. Just to have fun, print some stuff, and didn't have a well-defined educational value behind it. However, when I heard about such a company, I quickly connected the dots, as they say, and saw great educational potential in it. I was keenly interested in it myself, during my studies. Oh, I published a little, not very widely, but I wrote some… I took part in student projects, reports, essays, and actually my master's thesis was somewhat related to the topic of innovation in the country, the innovation system. Somewhere, this education sector has always been a gear shifting. Either way. So, I simply joined this company out of vocation and out of a desire to test myself after consulting earlier. I felt the need to do something with a deep sense of conviction and mission. And at the same time, great development. And I joined in 2017. He quickly came up with the idea, it's hard to say what the moment was, but at some point the idea came to him: hey, what if we could print 3D robots? And that was the main idea, why not, I mean let's try it. And in the course of such iteration, sculpting, I have always wanted to build an educational product, but I would say since 2020, it has taken the form I described earlier. With the academy, with the teacher base, with the hardware, with the equipment around. It is such a tool, but it is not an end in itself. Interestingly, Skriware has gone so far that we no longer produce our printers. The last of our internal production has lasted a year and a half, to put it colloquially. However, now we are an integrator of software for external 3D printers. The robots are here to stay, we certainly consider this to be our competitive advantage, especially in terms of technology, but the key remains the software. And our educational know-how in the background, which allows us to use various models of 3D printers that are already installed in schools.
[T]: Ok, so from a manufacturer of such printers on the consumer market, de facto to a supplier of educational system solutions.
[K]: Software-based, yes.
[T]: Ok, bomb. So tell me and our listeners what role or, in other words, does technology provide a certain competitive advantage for Skriware in this educational market? Is technology changing the education market at all in your opinion and is it an important part of Skriware? If so, to what extent? I don't even mean the percentage, because it's hard to give 10, 50, 100. But what is your feeling about it, your perception?
[K]: A short digression, maybe, from the outside looking in. I sometimes provide mentoring, pro bono, and I find myself in it by simply sharing with someone, perhaps still a modest, but, let's say, battle-tested experience. And I always say, never leave technology. They often complain: we create here, call it Uber again, there used to be Uber, Facebook, Tinder, or something like that, I don't know, now it's some kind of blockchain, isn't it, something has spilled out. Now there will be AI. There are different phases, they are all fugues, as they used to say. This is an important thing, but not always, that is, depending on the market we are in. The technology well meets a certain market need and certain user needs. You need to determine whether it is a significant, understandable problem for which they want to pay. Technology that effectively is… And so on. There are many things that need to be understood. Technology is somewhere almost at the end. So now here's the general theory always…
[T]: At the end, I'm sorry, in terms of chronology, or at the end in terms of importance?
[K]: When it comes to the definition of the business model, even the definition of the product. I think this is the last tab. Okay, so what technology do we use for this? Because there may also be a situation in which we do not need to use this technology. We can make templates, that's it, it's happening more and more often. Or external teams to deliver it. A very logical valid proposition. However, returning to the context of the educational market. Yes, this market is very unsaturated with technology yet. This is still a poorly digitized market. Just like a system of some public administration. This is happening. Now the European Union has enormous money for this. This may be a topic for another podcast. I'm digging into this topic myself, so let's wait.
[T]: Okay.
[K]: But there are a lot of things to do in schools. This system is seriously behind schedule. Unfortunately, because of this, he also experienced a certain infatuation with various technologies. We had a situation in the past where… Skriware and I didn't have time to catch on to the hype, where 3D printing entered and the promise was made that 3D printing would be under the roof in every home, in every school. Many companies sold and went bankrupt. This market has become so clear that in Poland alone, at one point, I counted 200 companies that dealt with 3D printing. Now there are maybe literally 30 left. Everything, including services, printing, everything, right? So here were examples when it comes to the Polish market. Interactive whiteboards. Once upon a time, such a program was created to replace chalk with a tool that connects to the Internet and increases the interactivity of the project. Cool. But due to the lack of training, and the lack of methodical showing the teacher how to use it wisely at school, we have a situation in which these boards either stand and collect dust, or are used as a large paint for drawing, which is practically chalk, but much more expensive. and it makes no sense. And it may still break. Or videos are played on YouTube so that these kids can sit there quietly. So through technology you can get a counterproductive effect. And unfortunately, we too were victims of this thinking. We said, here we will enter schools through technology, we are doing something fantastic. Because the idea was to combine robotics with 3D printing to make the only printable, programmable 3D toys in the world. Later, teaching aids for teachers and so on, to follow this line of reasoning. However, technology is not the most important thing in education, the most important thing is understanding, a perfect understanding of the teacher's perspective, which is very different in different countries. And adjusting the business and sales distribution model that responds and allows you to monetize and use the cycles, very large purchasing cycles, that appear. Replacing textbooks, modernization and so on. However, technology is coming back again, because it's OK, let's try new applications, so it is a reason to buy something, but it is never a reason for any lasting qualitative change in the educational model. Now I am often asked about the use of VR in education. This is such a new fashion. VR goggles are being introduced in a big stream, basically all Polish primary schools have bought VR goggles. Today I was at a school, for example, where the school purchased VR sets for PLN 70,000. A lot of hay, right? Because there was a state subsidy. Besides, such a subsidy program, we were also an indirect beneficiary of such a program, because 3D printers were also preferred. VR goggles, at this point I don't see a good application yet that allows children, for example, to learn cooperation, look into each other's eyes, get along, cooperate, collaborate. If someone puts on goggles, I see it as if they were putting a smartphone through their face. In practice, this is how it works. It seems to me that this is an abomination of the teaching model that I see, so technology is important. However, if, at this moment, along the way we came, it gives us a competitive advantage in that we are able to quickly develop various types of products.
[T]: Okay, okay, so… Maybe so, I will share one digression, because I learned several applications of VR goggles or the use of virtual reality in practice. From my perspective, it seems extremely interesting and practical.
[T]: I will give you two examples of such applications and I would also like to ask you for a short comment. Do you think this makes sense or not? I really like what you said. Technology is a kind of tool that can be more engaging in some way and solve certain problems. Not an end in itself, but getting to the point of what I wanted to say. First thing, education for crane operators in ports. Ports, as a rule, have limited space, the ability to unload ships and, in short, teaching every operator in practice is very problematic. Because it stops work in the port and causes quite large losses. But it can be simulated in a very practical way, close to reality, using VR goggles and controlling such a crane and conducting a large part of the exercises in practice. This saves a lot of hours, in fact, on training, and thus allows you to operate, unload at the port, let's call it, uninterrupted. What do you think? Is it business-wise from your perspective?
K: Yes. This means that it falls into the category of use in on-the-job-training, in training, training, vocational training or in industry education, vocational education in IT or CIT, depending on whether we are in Europe or the United States. I know this topic, I know companies that deal with it. In my opinion, this is a very well-defined use-case that is worth paying for. And yes, this is where VR plays its role, in my opinion.
[T]: Okay, great. The second issue, more down-to-earth, is actually occupational health and safety training conducted using VR goggles. I think this especially had a nice application during the epidemic, where people had certain restrictions on meeting or doing certain types of work. This provided the opportunity to conduct either strictly occupational health and safety training. However, I would also say more complicated ones, such as a simulation of a terrorist attack, for example. Potentially, at such an airport it is… In other words, an event with a low probability of occurrence, but whose effects may be significant. And from my perspective, the use of VR in such education is also very cool. In a sense… The conclusion for me is that technology itself cannot be something that we strive to simply introduce technology, but to use it wisely. In other words, it is good to examine the problems of users, teachers in this case, and students, right? I would say from the students' point of view, this is a low-involvement way of imparting knowledge, and from the teachers' point of view, as I understand it, the challenge is how to provide knowledge in the most practical way possible so that students want to get involved, right?
[K]: At the same time, doing it in practically magic time, that is, without spending an unknown amount of time on it, without deep motivation to train and without market reward, without being rewarded for better results, often. Let me tell you, Tomek, ladies and gentlemen, this is an extremely difficult market. Bloody difficult. Because it's very nice to have missionaries, or missionaries, and not mercenaries, as they say in two types of workers. These are not mercenaries, these are people who know each of our missions by heart and know exactly why they are doing it and give their all. But unfortunately it's not easy.
[T]: Okay, I'll touch on the topic of technology. From your perspective, what are the biggest challenges related to creating or implementing technology? It's one thing, so I conclude, to diagnose these user problems well, but what other, biggest challenges did you face when implementing technology in education? And how did you solve them with the team? What you're saying is that you've been on a journey of several years to introduce solutions and systems into education.
[K]: Well, yes, I would start with resources. That means the first thing is financing. Retrospectively, we decided that we had undertaken a really damn difficult mission, wanting to build a hardware business in Poland and also in 3D printing, which is a very unique technology. This technology is not yet as efficient as, let's just say, televisions. She is younger than VR by the way. The first VR goggles were created before the first 3D printer, some kind of prototype. So we see where VR is, let's wait. And doing it for a lot of money, for, I don't know, several million zlotys. It was some kind of budget that I had to fight with. So we had to use funds from the National Center for Research and Development very quickly, and this is like a specific recommendation. Or maybe not so much a recommendation, but an idea for the listeners that it is worth reaching for funds, grants from the National Center for Research and Development. If you really want to put emphasis on the development of technology. For our center, this institution, the most important thing is to conduct research and development work, preferably to involve universities in it. Thanks to this, you can finance really good people, build great technology, but it will not build a super company, because business and commercial issues and the question of whether this is the right technology and so on, these are things that are the responsibility of the funder, remain to be resolved. It was also a great challenge to finance it and it would not have been possible without the grant. We went, I think that in hindsight, thanks to the financing of this work, we managed to build this robotic system, software that now gives us such possibilities that… I don't know, an idea comes to mind, an idea for a project, let's say, artificial intelligence, something, pop of the ready-made stuff, we can do it in a month. An idea is created, some set, I will use Lego, for example, we had to compete with Lego, it was a case, there was an order written specifically for Lego equipment, tick, we did exactly that in 2 weeks, in special, dedicated boxes. And we won, because we were also much cheaper, but with whom we could join even more opportunities. So that gives us at this point that we have it so developed, we're just able to develop new products quickly, right?
[T]: Is a good team the answer to this or something else that you are able to adapt to market requirements so quickly?
[K]: A good team that can do these things and this is our legacy, the remnant of the fact that we have this software. One could say we have done a lot of exaggerated things, but now they are being monetized very well. From the perspective of time. This is one issue. For example, a big problem for us was that once we had a printer ready, let's say, with which we were constantly fighting, the robot was also largely ready to sell it. So we started with technology, with the bells and whistles, and then we started saying: okay, what does it have to have for it to be an educational product. That's not how it's supposed to be done, I know that now. I had to learn it myself, actually, no one guided me, no one told me: do this, and I did it differently, no - I have a clear conscience. I learned everything from my own mistakes, on my own initiative.
[T]: What would you say is a good place to start?
[K]: Talk to the end user very carefully, see who makes purchasing decisions in this system, in this market. See what the dynamics of payments are, when you earn money, how you can, I don't know, do SAS, let's say, yes, in some countries in education I know that SAS is banned, so these are some restrictions that people don't know , NO? See what you can build on… But above all, spend a lot of time talking to our users. So we should show the robot, let it go, observe how they play with it, what problems they have with cables, with assembling things, whether the instructions are understandable, where are the ideas for its use, under what conditions will they use it, or during additional classes? , or on basic ones, and so on and so forth. Such very precise focus groups, which we later, at some point, started examining, when a great head of product, Ola, joined us, then everything normalized. So we, by trying to sell basically just robots and a printer, plus there we had a comic book, let's say an educational narrative around Mars, created, a mission to Mars. Now it would be fashionable if we dug it out. We found that our distributors, even though they fall in love with this product, sign very quickly, but it's a great product, I've never seen anything like it in my life, they are also people at the end, boom, we take the first order. I go to the investors, success, success, the tap is turned on, you can move on. However, there were no repeatable sales, it often turned out that we only went to them because they had 100 or sometimes 1000 other products and simply treated us as, oh, we are innovative, so we sell screws, but we have robots for that, you know. printers. So we were like this, there was this inequality, they meant a lot to us, we meant nothing to them, they had no motivation to sell it. You also need to understand such things when entering into a deal, why, who will take care of it, i.e. there is a dedicated key account for this product, because we sell the B2B model, through distributors, we do not run our own there… I mean, we also sell in the field, but this is a trace, a trace thing, more sowing, not scaling, that's what it's all about. So this product market fit, through a perfect understanding of users and those who buy it, i.e. distributors, why, well, it was very important, because it would probably stop us from spending a lot of money, very large funds, for example on foreign travel . Where we went, we tested, but honestly, it wasn't a pair of whistles, because we learned from different perspectives, different companies, different distributors. It was a valuable experience. I don't know if there was anything else, there were certainly more such requirements, right? I can't think of any other issues now. I would definitely say, in terms of the technology itself, well, there were a lot of specific things like that. Because we have, for example, injection molds, well, this is a chapter, one of the four chapters in the Skriware manual, which would cover how to prototype and how not to prototype injection molds. How to generally build production from a 3D printed concept, on, say, Lego repeatable products, to a brick factory. We have enormous know-how, but it took about 30 of them to make, I will say this, to make an injection molded robot that has 237 or 280, I don't remember now, something like that, elements, not unique, but simply, after various things, unique, there are about 30 of them over 3 years (laughter). And it really was a full-time job. We had a dedicated person who did just this and only this, and at one point even two people and three external companies were working on it. So it really was a real ordeal, but I'll leave that for the injection mold geeks.
[T]: Okay, okay. Karol, listen… Is it a secret how much money you raised for technology development? How much time did you spend on technology development? Because these are things that may be of great interest to entrepreneurs. I understand that you can also have various types of NDs signed, but we have a certain time limit, right? This is several years, I understand, of technology development. And when it comes to investments, more or less, can you elaborate on that?
[K]: Yes. More or less, a dozen or so, rather a few million zlotys. Including all funding, including grants, over a four-year period, more than a little. This allowed us to get to the point where we had gone from printers and some twenty or so initial printers to a stage where we already had the software and practically all the hardware ready.
[T]: Great. I understand that you will now be available in every primary school, what does it look like?
[K]: It remains to be seen, because it works in such a way that those research institutes that enjoy a good reputation among teachers and the Ministry of National Education release such mailing plus incentives plus additional messages in the systems and to school boards and schools, generally full they are supposed to hit with a bench. Then I have to make sure it happens, but that's how it's supposed to work. An invitation to all schools and an encouragement to apply for a free software package of everything I mentioned earlier, all the know-how and content, the software and content itself, to apply to us so that we can make such a package available free of charge for 12 months. Forever there. So at the end of the day it depends on the management or teachers whether they will volunteer or take advantage of this opportunity. And the incentive is that thanks to this they will implement the assumptions of the Laboratories of the Future program, this is the mandatory element, one billion zlotys went from investments in Polish schools. The largest program in history in Poland, one that equipped the school with, among others, robots, electronics, as I said earlier, VR goggles and various other things. Also, the incentive is quite specific, teachers should understand this, but most of all they should understand that the biggest winners will be the children.
[T]: That's what I wanted to say. I mean, on the one hand, at the end of our conversation, these low several million with a potential billion to be spent in Poland, I assume that not only for 3D printing and related software, but also, as you said, for VR goggles, it seems not that much such a big investment. So this is quite nice news, but what you said from my perspective as a father is extremely important, because I want our children to learn in an engaging way and for learning to be fun. Because I believe that thanks to this, as humanity, we change and move forward, this is my subjective opinion. But I would like everyone to have the opportunity to learn with a smile on their faces, which is what I wish for all students, our children, not only in Poland, but also abroad. Let technology, or rather good, wise, well-thought-out solutions using technology, give us a lot of fun and a better level of education. Karol, thank you very much for the interview.
[K]: Thank you, Tomek, I really enjoyed it.
