Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, Startup School
Saturday July 24, 2010 , 5 min Read
Startup School is a school that is running on the Supercool School platform. It has about 1700 members and had some of the leading entrepreneurs from the US & Europe speaking in the live environment - for example Jason Fried from 37 Signals, Brad Feld from the Foundry Group or Marc Benioff from Salesforce. Startup School is an open university for entrepreneurs from around the world with topics from "How to get funding" to "Cooking for entrepreneurs". Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, Founder,SuperSchool talks to YourStory about startup school.
1) Tell us more about yourself
My name is Bjoern - I am a entrepreneur and passionate change maker in education. My biggest satisfaction is seeing people unfolding their true potential. Currently I am working on Supercool School - aiming to build a global education infrastructure giving people worldwide access to education.
In my past I have been working on a number of non and forprofit ventures - mostly in the education space in Germany, Russia and Bangladesh. My last startup before Supercool School was a performance tracking tool that allowed companies and universities to track various performance indicators for example social and leadership skills that are not reflected in traditional evaluations but are crucial for companies today.
Before I was a managing partner at a Russian Marketing Agency and before that I led an non profit initiative to help local startups in Bangladesh to evolve and connect with companies in Europe.
2) What is Startup School ?
Startup School is a school that is running on the Supercool School platform. It has about 1700 members and had some of the leading entrepreneurs from the US & Europe speaking in the live environment - for example Jason Fried from 37 Signals, Brad Feld from the Foundry Group or Marc Benioff from Salesforce. Startup School is an open university for entrepreneurs from around the world with topics from "How to get funding" to "Cooking for entrepreneurs". The strong community is driven by ambassadors from around the world including Mihai Mafteianu - a serial entrepreneur from Romania, Stefano Bernardi - an entrepreneur & blogger from Italy, Martin Froenmark - an aspring entrepreneur from Sweden, Arun Pattnaik - a blogger and designer from India, and many more.
It is a wonderful feeling to see many of the startups that pitched on Startup School months back are now profitable or received funding. A number of the former listeners on Startup School are now active contributors and the Startup School community became the missing tribe for many entrepreneurs. A couple of my friends today I got to know through Startup School.
Supercool School enables people to build their own school with 1 click. It's a white label online school platform that uses demand based and real-time technologies to empower a next generation of schools to be created. Educators get one simple social environment to reach a global audience and Edupreneurs get access to a platform that allows them to build scalable & branded education businesses without high technology cost. A platform that is changing the economics of education on a global scale.
Since its launch in January 2010 Supercool School has lead to the creation of over 1000 next generation online schools in 20 countries and over 30 different markets generating revenue from the very first month.
3) What was the idea behind such an initiative?
Startup School and Supercool School are entirely driven by the passion of helping people to grow and become who they really are. My personal epiphany moment was one of the first projects I did in Highschool where I noticed that grades actually don't reflect the results somebody can deliver in a real world setting. It might stupid today but at this time it really struck me that a lot of outstanding people actually had very bad grades in school. From then on I dedicated a large amount of time in lobbying and executing a change in education in Germany. Finally ending up in a national expert council for education in Germany.
With Startup School I want to inspire thousands of companies to be build around the world.
With Supercool School we want to revolutionize education with a global infrastructure of Schools that can provide the entire world with access to education.
4) How do people use this platform?
Supercool School allows you to create your own school with one click. Startup School is an open environment where you can request, participate and hold your own live meetings and classes with and for other entrepreneurs from around the world.
5) What are your plans w.r.t India?
India is one of the fastest growing countries for Supercool School and Startup School and most likely I will be visiting India fairly soon. I can't wait - it will be my first time.
Startup School URL:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Startup-School/86958458627
Bjoern URL:
http://www.facebook.com/bjoernlasse
Previous sessions:
- Session with Jason Fried (cofounder of 37 signals): http://startup.supercoolschool.com/classes/2680
- Session with Bill Liao (cofounder of xing): http://startup.supercoolschool.com/classes/2370
- Class on Split Testing with Rob Walling: http://startup.supercoolschool.com/classes/2348