It always sneaks up on you how fast your children grow. Before you realize it—they are not babies anymore. They go through their clothes, toys. They have their lives next to you, but these are their own lives already. They have their friends, their interests. And—computers and electronics. Well, my kids started by taking over our home computer, then my laptop… I got a used laptop for them—it ended up being too outdated for what they needed.
The truth is that in today’s world children cannot even get through school without having access to a PC. They are introduced to a PC in primary school and, in some places, they're using EdTech in kindergarten or earlier. By the time they are in middle school, they cannot do their daily homework without a computer, never mind papers, research and other numerous projects they have at school.
So, I ended up needing two more computers for our household. And these computers also needed operating systems, office applications and other software. This is when we started talking to other parents and realized that most of them were considering three options: giving their children their own old computer, getting them a used or a refurbished computer, or just going to the store and buying everything new.
What was interesting was that almost none of the parents realized that they could buy computers and software for their children with academic discounts based on their children enrollment in schools.
Here is how it works: let’s say you find a vendor who offers academic discount with the product you are interested in, then you need to get a letter from your child’s school confirming their status as a student, you fax or email that letter to the vendor, wait for the vendor’s verification and approval and then you can finally make your purchase. Yes, the process is rather cumbersome, but it is possible to get academic discounts from many vendors. The thing is that parents are simply not aware of it.
Then came the idea—what if we would sign up a school so that all its families would be able to benefit from academic discounts and buy products based on their association with the school? How about the faculty? We could do that for them as well. That’s how we started thinking about this business.