I guess you could say that I have a personal mission statement; call it the root of my inspiration.  Simply put, I want to unleash human potential. That’s something that fascinates me deeply.  The question is; how do you that?  

 

The basic principle is pretty obvious: if you provide people with the right education and support then you can unlock their potential. But practically that is difficult. For example, I recall an event at high school that perplexed me. It involved a competition where project teams had to compete against each other.  I really wanted to win so I gathered some of the top students together in our team. I really thought that would do it; but we ended up losing. That was a real lesson for me. Clearly school grades don’t always predict success in the real world. This got me thinking a great deal about education and modern management techniques, with the result that education—and people development more generally—has been a red line running through my career thus far. For example, before I moved to the States I sat on an education expert council for the German government and I founded a performance network that was based on some organisational consulting work I did earlier. My product was based on the idea that you need to assess people’s soft skills—social skills, leadership, empathy and such—in order to deploy them optimally in the organisation. It may sound a bit superficial but it does have an important impact.  

My current business partner Steli Efti had been writing about the idea of a world school for years and was already in the U.S.  We got connected via a mutual friend who worked at Google and talked about the idea of setting up a project in this field. That’s when I also made the move to Silicon Valley. The atmosphere here is incredibly intense. I’ve been learning so much about entrepreneurship, especially in the area of web start-ups.  It has this incredible concentration of smart and dynamic people; I’ve never experienced anything like it.

 

We launched Supercool School in January this year but the general idea has been around much longer. It’s something we’ve been discussing for years. The platform began to take shape, however, via a project we did for Google. They asked us to develop an application—a teaching application—for their engineers. That’s where we learned the key lessons for building the software. Google’s education people got really excited about the platform but by that time we were already dreaming about something bigger. We wanted to create a platform that everybody could use, a platform that could change education globally.

Supercool School is based on a simple idea.  Let’s do for education what blogging has done for media. Let’s offer education to anyone—education that is relevant to them—but let’s base it purely on the supply and demand of people. There are so many people out there with useful skills that they can teach to others—so let’s leverage, or unleash that potential for teaching and learning.  Obviously this is a model that focuses on practical skills; it is not based on certificates or formal education programmes.

 

Learning is bit like dating. You need to connect to the right people.  And you need the right social context. That’s in essence what we’re trying to facilitate with Supercool School.  It’s an online platform where people can launch their own school; but in addition we’ve focused very heavily on the social and community building functionalities. For the right support and motivation you need to be part of a broader community. For example, Startup School is one of the bigger schools on the platform and it works because it gives people—from all over—a supportive social context in which to learn about entrepreneurship. It’s about connecting people with similar mindsets and values.

So to sum up, there are three key components to the model: one, a platform for education; two connecting people; and three, a social context. That’s the basics. But more ideas followed. For example, we’re also beginning to look at this as a type of LinkedIn for education. Could this evolve into an enormous repository of knowledge or skills profiles?  As a user you could gradually develop your profile on the basis of the skills that you have acquired. 

 

At present the platform is still a prototype. It has to be seen in this way. We have deliberately kept the tool very simple to begin with, with a minimum of features. We simply wanted to implement the core idea and test whether there is demand for this. And demand there is. We launched the site in January 2010—that’s about 8 months ago now—and almost 1,400 schools have been set up since then. Some schools have more than 2,000 students already and nearly all of them are growing. So now we’re really going for it.  We’re adding features, we’re investing—perhaps this thing can change the world in some way!

Why the success?  I guess that people are really excited about the platform and it’s spreading via word of mouth.  We’ve done no marketing and we have a very small team.  We’ve been ‘bootstrapped’ as they say here.  All our time and money has been invested in the product itself. That’s been the focus.

 

I don’t see Supercool School competing with formal education. At this point I think it is just meeting demand for more practical learning. There are a lot of jobs out there that require ongoing updating of practical knowledge.  In most areas, learning is becoming a part of your work.  We’re meeting demand for that type of learning. And learning is also becoming a part of your day-to-day life. For example, how many elderly people can use Facebook or a smartphone? There’s a lot of demand out there for that type of learning. Basically society is made up of people who have particular skills and people who are looking for those skills. The trick is to match those people.

 

Most of our schools have been set up by men in the age category 35-45 who have an entrepreneurial background. They tend to have a strong educational background and already have an income. So why do they do it? I think they do it because they’re passionate about learning. They’re knowledge seekers; they’re constantly learning, but they’ve also experienced a great deal in their lives. That’s a fundamentally different profile to the typical school teacher, who often is someone who values security and hasn’t done much outside school teaching.  

 

Personally, I see platforms like Supercool School integrating with formal education. The online model has some real advantages that are difficult to replicate in the physical world: people can choose who they learn from, who they learn with, and when they learn. That’s a powerful driver.