Co-founders of the app, Hasan AlDoy and Lana Al-Attar, tell us all about their invention, the Edutainer that integrates education with entertainment.
Tell us briefly about yourself.
My name is Hasan AlDoy. I am the co-founder of Edutainer along with Lana Al-Attar. I am currently working as a broadcast engineer at Bahrain TV for 16+ Years, developing interactive television games. I built the first outside broadcast van and founded 3 startups with one successful exit through Tenmou. I have secured the first place of Bahrain Startup Weekend 2012 for my Startup uTrack TV, a livestreaming platform for Sports Events from all over the world. I am also the first Bahraini to be funded by 500 Startups in San Francisco (2015) as founder of uTrack TV and participated in their Accelerator program for 4 months. 3 Awards winner of the Best Web Design (2004-2007). I have been the mentor of several Bahraini Entrepreneurs.
Lana is the winner of the first place in Bahrain Startup weekend. She is also the Global Shaper (An Initiative of the World Economic Forum) and an Ashoka ChangeMakerExchange Fellow.
Give us a brief summary about your educational and professional background.
Hasan: B.Sc. of Computer Science. University of Greenwich, UK. Currently doing Masters in Computer Science. Senior Broadcast Engineer at Bahrain TV since 2000.
Lana: B.Sc. computer science. AMA, Bahrain.
8.5 years banking and hr, ABC Bank
And 2.5 years web design and development on the side… 1 year and half full time. also have a degree in treasury and capital markets from BIBF.
When and how did you get around to developing Edutainer?
It came out from the frustration of educational technique used with my own kids at school and how they’re bored from studying or doing their homework, met the co-founder Lana and she came up with the same idea and the name “Edutainer” and things went on from there. We’re in an era where we can change the way we live, why can’t we change the way we educate, which hasn’t change in the past 150 years?
‘Edutainer’ is an interesting name. Tell us more about the business and how did this business idea strike you?
It’s an Education and Entertainer mashup, it’s a better way of educating in an entertaining methods and a marketplace where teachers and students can exchange educational material, collaborate and optimize teaching methods. Schools can use it as their own “Multi Sourced” Learning Management System.
What have been the initial challenges and how did you overcome them?
At first the ability to approach schools or even teachers was a bit challenging, but we had to take it from another perspective where we had to hire teachers to create prebuilt education materials in a much entertaining methods and rich visuals.
Where do you see Edutainer in the next 5 years?
Edutainer is NOT just another Learning Management System, it can either replace any form of eLearning System that already existing or to be integrated, the next 5 years will be very exciting time as we’re going to be implementing into several interested education institutes signup for our first year.
If you were to list 5 essential qualities of a successful entrepreneur, what would they be?
- Ability to manage finance to avoid burnout within short runways.
- Diversify income streams.
- Adapt to Market Niche and users feedback.
- Keep Learning, it’s an entrepreneurs lifestyle not a destination.
What is your message to aspiring entrepreneurs of Bahrain?
Entrepreneurship is a state of mind, it’s not something can be educated. It’s a process of learning to communicate and collaborate on many levels throughout many skills, Bahrain is considered one of the best places to ignite a startup and conquer the World without leaving the lovely island. I’ve lived in Silicon Valley and learned so much from their culture, have also been to Googleville to get involved in Google Project X, I do see many similarities of Bahrain’s Entrepreneurs with an exception of a proper EcoSystem and Incubation. We would like to sincerely thank CH9 at Amwaj, they are determined to change that!