 Let's get this started. I'm really excited to be here to talk about an amazing company right out of Europe It's going from Poland to the world. So let's start it off by talking about Can you tell me a little bit of more about the founder story of brainly and how you got the idea? Yeah, sure. So as was introduced brainly is a global learning community We unite students teachers and parents in solving their academic problems And we help them to exchange knowledge between between each other and The story started with the inspiration was my high school. Okay, so my class was very collaborative We were we are asking questions answering questions all the time And and the foundation for brainly is to move that behavior online. So we build the brainly with the Assumption that's okay having 20 friends in your classroom or 40 friends Depending on where you are around the world is great, but being able to ask your question to millions of other students it's it's even better and Yeah, like every question that gets asked we put it into our knowledge base. So then it's easier accessible for other students and Yeah, that's that's what we do and that's the brain start awesome So can you tell me a little bit about how the platform itself works? So when a student goes on can they just ask all the questions they have Can they just put their homework up and have everyone answer it? How does it work? Yeah, so we have three Types of usage one comes from students so students the typical use case is that there is a pop quiz the next day And they are trying to prepare and they don't understand something or there is one of the homework questions It's really difficult and they don't understand how to do it So then they go to brainly to ask questions and and get and understand the topic But we also have parents and teachers using us So the typical parents use case is that they were asked a question by By their kids and they don't know how to answer so they go to brainly Check the answer understand how to do it and then they go back to their to their kids to explain and the teachers use case is Is quite special because we are really engaging to teachers who are passionate about education So so there are teachers who even after school after after the paid time of their of their day work They still would like to help students a lot And what the brain it gives them is that they can help thousands of students Not only the classroom that they have at school. Wow, that sounds like an amazing community And as was just mentioned before now you guys are you have a hundred million students from all over the world But you started in Poland So can you tell me a little bit about of course you are from Poland? So yeah, why you started there Why didn't you just go to the US or somewhere else in Europe to start your company at first? Yeah, we started about 10 years ago. So That was a bit of a different time in Poland from funding perspective Mm-hmm, and we just wanted to focus on the market that we understand so we knew that this niche exists in Poland But at some point we and we discovered that there is more than a billion students and Every student needs help in learning every day and this is where we would like to be to help them So we decided to enter new markets and we started with Russian speaking markets Okay, and Where we have about 80 to 90 percent of middle and high school students using us every every month And right now we are really excited about India. It's our newest markets growing really fast. So Exciting times. That's awesome So how did you manage that transition from focusing just on Poland to focusing on places like Russia and places like India and even more countries? Yeah, I think the big conclusion was to understand which parts of our product We need to globalize and have one unified a version between all of the geographies But also which part needs to be Localized for each market. So like right now that answer looks obvious because every country has a different curriculum But we were struggling to understand really to put that border between global product that is unified with Localized part of the product. So our knowledge base is localized So which market has its own knowledge base where students ask and answer questions Okay, but the product from look and feel perspective is exactly the same around around the words I think that was the main challenge to re-understand. What is global? What is local interesting? And are there any interesting specific examples about localization in specific markets that surprised you or yeah So for example, India is very focused on test preparation and on and and students in fact are very committed to to learning to get Like to pass the exams in the best possible way because that's the ticket for them to get an engineering degree or medical degree And and what we've noticed is that that use case in our Indian platform is very very popular Markets differ between between each other depending on development of the educational system and Every educational system has its flows and we see that on the daily basis in the way students use our platform Very interesting So from Russia India and tons of other countries now you're moving into the United States Which is one of the most competitive markets for education in the world Can you tell me a little bit about that decision to go to the US and what's what is it like there? Yeah, so what we've seen like us is obviously that like huge market with a lot of spending power Done done online. So I think it pops up on the radar of any any consumer company around the world So so that was that you know that country that we really wanted to enter but But the journey Is is slightly different because we decided to set up an office to to enter the US market We just thought that that's to win the US. We need to We need to focus on our product make sure it's it's polished to the to the extent to like match the competition But in the meantime what we've discovered is that there is in fact quite a lot of products that go kind of like via schools to students Okay, so they approach schools teachers and then teachers refers students to use the product But our model is different like we approach students directly because what we see is that Students are a lot more active if it's their own decision to use the education product Definitely, and then what we see our teachers and parents to follow and there are products that are using that model in the US But they're not that that many in that space specific Interesting, so it's really like reaching out to those students and getting them involved And then they get those teachers and parents involved as well. Yeah, so how do you reach out to the students? Is it word of mouth? How do you build that community? Yeah, so so we we are lucky to have purely organic growth So our marketing budget is pretty much non-existent And our growth model is fairly simple So when a question receives an answer we put it into our knowledge base the bigger the knowledge base gets more people are coming And that means more questions more answers So that's this snowball that keeps growing and And helps more students very interesting and I guess so you guys serve teens, right? How do you really get into their heads and understand what their problems are with education and homework? How do you understand that? Yeah, I think that's that's the toughest part of this because students and teenagers are Are this user group who is changing their their products very very easily? and our answer to that was really to focus on On on our product and keep it simple and focus on one use case and that use case is to Make sure that the learning is more is more efficient Okay, so then when you remove that part kind of being in the fashion type or Or being just a trend that's that this generation of teenagers uses, but the next one may not be using Like was that cautious decision? So so we just try to like deliver the need that every student has and And do it with a with a simple product that they can easily understand and that's our way to stay relevant. So Yeah, we started in Poland about 10 years ago And and yeah, like we keep growing and we don't see any Any pushback from students and I think that's that's kind of that combination of luck and planning And how are you working on a personalization for students? How does that work? Yeah, so so what we are doing is that we have this huge knowledge base So we have about 70 million answered questions in our knowledge base and what we do is that? The ultimate vision is to suggest the right content or the right person to help to any student that is using our products so So so what we are doing is that we are investing Investing a lot into our machine learning team to understand how the content is connected But it's not only from the purely academic perspective But also to help students connect the dots so they can see that okay linear equations can be used in this specific way in my adult life To make sure that they are more excited about learning Interesting so one thing that I thought was really cool when I was reading about brainly was these brainly superstars these students that go in and They answer hundreds of questions and they're kind of like I don't know if influence is a good word But they're just like an amazing example of someone using the platform Can you tell me about these superstars? Have you met some of them? Yeah, like in fact recently I've been to an event in Warsaw and somehow there was a 14 year old boy Okay, I Don't think it's Hello I'm not sure that the mic is working You want to talk one more time? Try talking again It's off. Yeah, I think the It's not working. Oh well Okay, I Guess it doesn't perfect Thank you so much so the bring me superstars and this 14 year old kid at this event in Warsaw tell me about him Yeah, and and he approached me and asked hey like I read the person who started brain And I said yes and he said thank you because when my parents cannot help me with homework And I really struggle with something brain is there to help me But we what we've done was to look at research and what we've noticed is that Brainy as a product makes students more curious So before that when they struggled with a question They didn't really have a lot of options because they could ask their parents They could ask their friends, but both options are are very limited time-wise, right? But because they go to Brainy and they understand topics they can they they start embracing more tough questions And and then from from the perspective of of asking new questions. They just feel more empowered Interesting cool. So then I want to pivot a little bit more and talk about ed tech in general So what do you see being some big trends and ed tech over the next five years? What are you excited about? Yeah, I think that there are a few things like one space is are all of the products that make the school more efficient So so as I mentioned there is quite a lot of products who go to schools and try to get teachers excited and then students kind of follow the choice that teachers made and That space like is going to help to make the classroom more engaging more rewarding But also to optimize the time of teachers because teachers in fact work a lot and they need to put a lot of extra hours if they If they really want to become Amazing teachers and be considered like that. So my sister is a teacher and I see how much work she needs to do And I've seen her embracing new technologies and and that works really really well for her The second part as I've mentioned before is that is that direct to students products So it's kind of that outside of school space where students can Depending on if they need to catch up with a topic or if they if they are really interested in something They want to explore more and learn more They can they can get there and and get that help So I think these are the two major trends right now and then there is a question of delivery So of a platform and like you have mobile products You have AR VR all of that wheel we reinforce these two big trends, but I think that big trends will stay Pretty much pretty much the same. So within all of those trends. What's next for brainly? Yeah, I think there are a few things one thing that we are really excited about is is our growth in India It's our fastest growing markets really focused on education And I think educational technology space is really strong in India Students are really motivated that they understand that that to progress their life They they need to spend a lot of time learning. It's that it's the same with with parents and And in fact what we see is that there is quite a lot of products already there that we can learn from But what we can do with that with that learnings is to is to make them global so so recently we've we've noticed a behavior of our students in India of our users in India and And then we build a feature for for that use case and we've noticed that it can work very similarly around the world Interesting. So so what we so what we are doing is that because we are present in about 35 countries We can get learnings from each country about making learning more efficient and then we can implement that solution around The world fascinating and what about the US? What's next for brainly in the US? US is is a market where we are where we are growing fast. Like in fact, it's one of the markets where we monetize So we are really focused on on on building a successful monetization story based on our US US traction But yeah, like we would like to onboard more Students more more parents and teachers in the US and that's our main focus for that market very interesting And so as you're going forward, I just wanted to ask if you think there's any Advantages to being a European company or your experience coming out of Poland that's helping you compete on a global stage I think like We quite quickly realize that's to that to build a big impactful business in Poland We need to become global and and that helped us to push our culture to be very diverse and and International very early, okay, so So I think we have about people from 20 different nationalities working on the brainly right now and we and we embrace that That cultural background that we need to understand to be present in so many in so many markets And I'm not sure if that's true for Other European countries, but when it comes to Poland and building that B2C business I think it's a great advantage for us to have So many cultures and try to understand them and build products that that are appealing to to all of the countries Yeah, I definitely feel like that's true of many European startups They have that diversity and that resilience kind of baked into them from the beginning because there's no single one market here in Europe they have to learn how to understand many different consumers from the beginning so definitely feel like that's true So then one vinyl thing is do you yourself go on to brainly and actually answer questions? Yeah, I try to do it as often as possible, but The reality is that questions at high school level are so difficult That's why I totally understand parents who are Struggling with helping their kids. Yeah, and and why they come to brainly because like the level where I answer questions are Middle school questions and I have questions about interest rates and In math, I think that's that's why my sweet spot and this is where I'm trying to where I'm trying to help But high school is definitely Really difficult. Yeah, definitely. I've looked at some of my brother's homework and I'm like, oh my gosh I could never even do this Very cool. So how many questions do you think that you've answered on brainly? I think I've answered in total like Tense of questions and it's hard to aggregate because like brainly as I mentioned is localized per market So I started answering in Poland then I started I've been answering in our US version That's so that's my activities kind of spread between between different markets. Wow international brainly user Okay, and then the final question is do you have any advice for found European founders today who are looking to create a global business? What's a one piece of advice you'd give them? Yeah, I think it's it's important to To embrace what what your background gives you and as I mentioned in our case It was to see that you cannot build a you can no longer build a huge B2C business out of Poland and then that pushes you to to think about So what are my next steps and what's the strategy to really achieve your your ambitions? And then it's about keeping the focus making sure that you You are focused on the one thing or like to maximum free at the at a given time and that you push and push and push Because at some point there will be that rewarding moment that will come and and that's a great feeling Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today. It was awesome to hear about brainly Thank you very much and anyone who's good at math go on and answer some questions and help the students out of brainly Thanks so much. Thank you