The founder and CEO of Kider App, Edit Szabo participated in CEU iLab Global Startup Bootcamp in July 2019. Since then Kider App was chosen to participate in CEU iLab’s one-year incubation program. We asked Edit about her experience and the ways in which the Bootcamp contributed to the growth of her business.
Could you tell us about your business, Kider App?
In the past couple of years, many of my friends had babies. As I tried to organise baby- and kid-friendly engagements with them, I realised how hard it is to find quality programs that fit kids’ needs.
Tamas Vecsei, KiderApp’s co-founder was my colleague at my previous company. As a father of 4, he also had similar experiences.
Before starting the company we did a lot of research to get an accurate picture about market needs. We realised that the main problem of parents is time. We identified several different solutions to the time factor. In the end we picked the idea of a mobile app that helps parents save time by listing kids’ programs based on their location matching their kids age and interest. Our mission is to „empower parents to spend more quality time with their kids”.
How did you come across CEU iLab?
As we started to work on making the project more visible, we finished third in Women Startup Competition in 2019 and pitched for several investors. I heard about CEU iLab through Absorice, one of the other teams participating in the incubation program. This is how I pitched for Andrea Kozma, director of iLab. I was aware that the Bootcamp can be an entry ticket to incubation, so it was no question that I would participate.
In what ways do you think the Bootcamp contributed to the development of your business?
The Bootcamp gave answers to a lot of questions and it gave me a model on how to make my company sustainable and profitable.
The summer of 2019 was an extremely intense period, as parallely with the Bootcamp we developed our business plan. By the end of the summer, we had our business plan and MVP ready and Kider app went live in October.
What kind of approach to entrepreneurship education did the Bootcamp use?
All the professors in the course have experience with not only the theoretical but also the practical side of entrepreneurship. So they did teach us a methodology, but the approach was not academic, they used a lot of real-world examples instead. They demistified a lot of complicated economic concepts and put them in practice. We also received individual mentoring with our business ideas.
How exactly did you put theory into practice during the Bootcamp?
We had a team assignment running throughout the course. We worked in teams of four/ five and it was an extra challenge that we were not allowed to work on our own business projects. The newly formed teams had to come up with a project of mutual interest and create a reasonable business model and pitch by the end of the program. So we had to put everything into practice we just learned during the course.
So what was the project your team worked on during the course?
My team came up with the idea of „alcotainment”, a party box that clients can tailor-make online based on their preferences and the type of the party. It was an extremely intense two weeks as we worked on this project every single day after the course. At the end of the bootcamp we had to make an investor pitch and it was actually our team that won the first place.
What was the most memorable part of the Bootcamp?
Professor Joy Chan was definitely a shining star of the Bootcamp. She explained some key financial concepts in an easily digestable way that are absolutely necessary for any startupper to be taken seriously by investors. After the bootcamp I was able to answer those typical investor questions with much more confidence.
The other key takeaway is the network I built. I was surrended by truly remarkable and talented people.
