The path from homework to business

Hello everyone, we are the Kids'n'Code team and we are starting a series of publications based on the development of our first project. Today we would like to tell who we are and how they came about.

It is possible to scold HSE as much as necessary and compare it with Moscow State University and the Financial University, but what HSE cannot take away is the startup spirit and encouragement of entrepreneurial activity. In HSE, in comparison with other universities, they focus on independent research and practical work. We, second-year students of business informatics, started the course “Startups” in winter, as part of the subject “Enterprise Architecture”. Classes are conducted by Dmitry Torshin , who gives relevant knowledge and tells interesting cases. In general, real entrepreneurs conduct classes in several subjects and share living experiences from the category “what is not told at the university”.

We gathered quite a lot for a startup - 7 people: 2 iOS developers, designer, Front-end developer, 2 managers (whatever that means) and a marketer. The girl designer has been dreaming about a project dedicated to teaching children programming and computer technologies for half a year. We all liked the idea and despite the fact that the education market in the field of programming is now close to a glut, after a short screening we did not find a good teacher for children in Russian.

Due to a number of reasons (and for the most part due to the qualifications of the developers) we decided to make a game for the iPad. There were many ideas: from the designer of robots and the creation of cartoons to complex games on Scratch. We stopped at the format of a logic game, where with the help of sequencing of commands the child must lead the robot to the goal, at the same time studying the most basic concepts of algorithms and programming in general. As you progress through, bonus levels would appear - mini-games, where we will talk about the device and computer operation.
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We are often divided into teams, so that we come up with an idea and do all the preparatory work and it always ended in nothing. So this time the team did not have much enthusiasm. Having drawn up the idea, as an experiment (study, we will learn to submit applications, we can reach full-time) we have applied for participation in the Foundation for Innovative Entrepreneurship, conducted by the same HSE. Imagine our surprise when we entered the list of 4 winning teams out of 71 teams of participants. It was the first bell that the idea of ​​the project is interesting not only to us.

An excellent experience was the participation of our team in the hackathon at the end of March. On it we made a prototype for two days with examples of two levels, realizing what we are capable of in terms of development, and believing in our strength. It was after the hackathon that we seriously began working on the project, and not doing the dz in the evening before the pair. By the way, the hackathon conducted the HSE incubator. We had a lot of experience interacting with different departments and programs of the tower, we can share in one of the future articles.

Not everyone in the team shared enthusiasm and were willing to devote all their free time to the project. So we broke up with 2 participants and became more like a small team (2 pizza boxes according to Bezos).

Development of the prototype was delayed, constantly making changes to the interface and control. But, like any student, the deadline helped us - the date of the first test at school for first-graders. The last features were screwed literally at night by our programmer. And we would like to tell you about the first test at a future Central Asian in the next article.

Thank you for your attention (I hope, besides the author, someone saw these lines), we are waiting for your questions, ideas and criticism.