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Company: Guroo Limited
Project: Reaching the Hard to Reach, online learning for students aged 14-19
Dates: Jan 2007 to Mar 2008
Attachments: 
How did the project start?
I started the company 18 months ago after working for other companies in the same market sector for 15 years, mainly in London.
Initially we knew we wanted to develop something to do with e-learning in the education market so we did something quite straightforward – we went and asked several local FE Colleges what they wanted from e-learning, after they are a key target customer group for us.
I also wanted to build a company in the North East, it’s my home, it’s what shaped me and it’s where I want to be. I also determined that I would use only local suppliers and it’s been a great decision.
What options did you consider?
The colleges we talked to all said one of their biggest issues was having learning materials that really engaged students, particularly those students who struggled to achieve. Too many learning tasks were text based, black and white “handouts” which didn’t help those students. We decided to focus on developing learning materials that a typical 14-19 year old who was “difficult to engage” or “hard to reach” in learning would enjoy using. We reasoned that if we could engage this type of student, we’d succeed with lots of others as well – we’ve been proved right!
We researched the market and found that new qualifications such as Specialised Diplomas and Functional Skills were being launched in September 08 so we made sure that everything we did was appropriate for the new curriculum standards and qualifications.
What help and expertise did you receive?
Initially we got a lot of help from Business Link in being able to establish a website that was clean, contemporary and above all was something that our target audience of 14-19 year olds would find appealing to use without being condescending.
We then found a learning content author based in the North who could write a series of learning tasks that focused on the core subjects of Maths, English and ICT but were based around themes that a 14-19 year old could relate to. Some of the examples we used included applying and auditioning for a X Factor, being a realty star’s PA, working as a gardener, helping out in a care home, booking a trip to Dublin for a weekend away and getting a car through an MOT.
Perhaps our biggest investment was in then making a series of 2 minute videos and 3 minutes podcasts to support the learning tasks. Students in our target group are much more comfortable with technologies like videos and podcasts so it seems perfectly obvious to use these to support the learning objectives. We did this all in-house.
Recently we’re got a lot of help from organisations such as NStar (business planning) and the Entrepreneurs Forum which is a truly great organisation based in the North East that really has helped me build my confidence and understanding of running a new business.
Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?
Every day brings new challenges and we make countless mistakes. We are a relatively new business making our way in a conservative market (education) developing and selling an innovative product so you can see there are many recipes for getting things wrong. And we’re trying to do it all on a tight budget as we don’t (yet) have external financing or investment so everything is funded from my savings.
Lets start with making videos and podcasts when you’ve never done it before is quite a challenge and we went through many weeks of trial and error before settling on the format we now use. Short, fast moving and with three very simple learning messages in each video.
It was also a challenge to find a number of young people who could voiceover the videos and podcast – we wanted to use voices that were regional, the same age as our target audience so that our student users could relate to them.
Selling is always a challenge but we’ve done OK and so far we’ve found customers with 5 FE colleges and 2 Local Authorities have now ordered the guroo materials for all their 14-19 students at school.
We’re now moving into implementation mode and seeing the fruits of our labours. We track everything that students do so we can monitor how well we’re engaging our students in learning.
One of biggest successes has been in Knowsley where 49% of all use of guroo has been in the evening or at weekends so we know that students are choosing to use us in their own time – now that’s a real big win!
What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?
Our business is on-line learning so being able to successfully develop and sell the guroo learning materials is our business.
We plan to become the UK’s successful provider of on-line educational materials and in the process we hope that we’ll be able to help many hundreds of thousands of students achieve better qualifications and hence improve their future life chances.
We all deserve great opportunities, we’re trying to deliver learning to students who have a visual or auditory style of learning and it’s working!
Focussing on the Functional Skills market has also given us an early marekt lead so even though we're small, we're seen as leaders in this area.
What are your plans for the future?
We’ve established that there is a definite market for what we do. We’ve invested just about £200,000 in building the initial web based system and in developing around 50 hours of learning materials so we have a pretty significant commitment to this!
We’ve managed to cover our overheads since our first sales in October and our plans are to grow our business to cover the UK Secondary Schools, Private Training Organisations and Colleges market.
We hope that next year, we’ll expand to a turnover of £750,000 and employ 8 staff in Houghton le Spring, tripling our staff and turnover the year after that as the new curriculum requirements in England start to become embedded.
Over the last four months, we have developed a business plan for investment and we are in the process of raising external funding of just over £0.25m to fund our expansion plans with the help of Nstar.
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