It was an honor for us as Nova Women in Business Club to learn more about today's challenges as a female founder with Nova CEMS alumna Antonia Schein. Antonia is originally from Berlin, Germany, and studied Sustainable Management for her Bachelor’s at TU Berlin, completed a Master’s in Management at Nova SBE, and spent her CEMS semester abroad at Copenhagen Business School. During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, she co-developed the idea for her startup called “Codary” as a master’s student and started collecting funds after her graduation. In September 2021, only 12 months after founding, Antonia was featured in an interview with the Financial Times, in which she spoke euphorically about her startup and its vision to teach young generations to code in a playful and fun way. Their goal is to offer every child in Europe the opportunity to learn programming within the next five years. Antonia is convinced that children need to learn the fundamentals of computer science in school so that they can be active and autonomous creators of the digital world, as opposed to mere consumers of technology. She believes that understanding how code works is a great way to empower the next generations.
But how exactly does she want to achieve that?
Every week, children between the ages of 7 and 16 have the opportunity to take an online course, where they are taught a programming language such as Python. A web-based learning platform and a learning app provide assistance in a gamified manner, for instance using Minecraft to teach programming. To us, this sounds like a great way to teach technical know-how in a playful way which equips children with long-term skills.
We were intrigued to know what motivated Antonia to found this unique business.
She mentions to only have gained first programming experiences during her business master’s but wishes that her own coding journey would have started way sooner. She as well states that the reason for this lack of teaching tech-related skills lies in the educational system in Europe which is not adapted to our digital age. During the pandemic, she saw an opportunity to start this business due to the increased acceptance of online learning models, which is what made her act immediately.
However, founding a business during a global pandemic is definitely not easy, and Antonia describes how it was already a challenge to meet up as co-founders in the initial starting phase, which she considers as the most crucial phase in founding a business. During the initial creative founding phase, it is utterly important to communicate a lot and think together through processes, legal frameworks, and financial matters, which were all complicated by several lockdowns. Nevertheless, this did not stop her and her co-founder from applying for the Berlin Startup Grant at the end of summer 2020 for which they were accepted immediately. Since then, they have raised a pre-seed from private investors and are currently working towards a seed round next year. In general, Antonia describes that the challenges are endless, and to really succeed, you definitely need the right problem-solving mindset.
We wanted to learn more about her experiences as a woman in the start-up environment. Interestingly, Antonia mentions that it actually helped to be a woman in some situations, for receiving visibility in panels, awards, newspapers, and events due to the underrepresentation of women in the founding scene. She also speaks though, of some occasions in which her male co-founder would receive more attention from investors at Startup Events.
Her user base is also still primarily made up of boys, with only 30% female users. Antonia states that this is most likely due to the fact that “Codary” started with a videogame-based Programming course called “Minecraft Python”, which primarily attracts boys. “Codary” is actively working on diversifying its course content to other interests in the near future. App Development, for instance, is a very creative and relevant process, which Antonia is certain will attract boys and girls alike.
Her advice for young female entrepreneurs is to look after oneself, since founding is not a sprint, but rather a marathon. She recommends to get in touch with other founders that go through the same everyday struggles of founding a company, and to find oneself a crowd of women that support each other. Antonia also believes that the funding journey is more fun when shared, and thus recommends to find a co-founder early in the process: “Lots of founders meet during their studies, so keep your eyes open!”
We want to thank Antonia for her time and valuable insights on the topic of female entrepreneurism. We wish you all the best for the future and an amazing journey with “Codary”!
Written by Isabel Averhardt, Laura Salazar & Marie Rasche
Comments