A Learning App Tutors 10 Million Children Worldwide

In this interview, Sooin Lee traces Enuma's path from her son's hospitalization to winning a $5 million share of the Global Learning XPRIZE, and recounts the outright discrimination she faced fundraising as a non-native English speaking female founder, along with the advice she now gives other women facing the same skepticism.

Hello, I'm Sooin Lee, CEO and co-founder of education startup Enuma. Enuma is a Silicon Valley based education startup. Our focus is sharply focusing on all of the struggle in the learning process of all children in the world. We have four major products: Todo Math, Todo English, Todo Korean, that is widely popular in Korea, Japan and China; Kitkit School, that won Global Learning XPRIZE competition and received 6 million grand prize by Elon Musk. We raised a $23 million venture funding so far and have more than 10 million downloads and number one popular app in the app store market.

We started this company with a personal motivation. My husband and I met in the first day of our college.

He was one of the best programmer in his peer in Korea and I was a student of a school of art. And then we both came to game industry, sometimes worked in the same company. Before coming to the United States, he was a technical director of NC Soft, and I was a corporation strategist, and I was a game designer before. When my son was born, he needed to stay in the hospital for two months. He had a hard time for many basic things like breathing or eating. And then we realized that he may need to learn so many things in life, with other people's effort and support. One day, a doctor came in and asked me, "What did you do before?"

I still remember the shame of saying, "Oh, I was a game designer," because game developer seems the least helpful job to help our children. And she said, "Oh, fantastic!"

These children need that type of profession. That was really, really important moment. I never thought that our history of making games could be helpful for those children who was born with disabilities. On that night, my husband and I Googled "Software for special education," and the quality of software we saw couldn't meet the bar in the front line of game industry. It was so natural to make that decision together, like, "Hey, let's make something that is more pleasant to do all those math deals when they were young." He is receiving amazing special education in this beautiful school. And he actually developed in his own way and enjoys his life. He learned everything in his own speed. But if you try to compare his achievements with other children, he is far slow. Even though he try his best, it's really hard to listen the full story from him. He is a really great inspiration for my husband and I. It was a really pleasure to see and support how he learned in his own speed.

I thought that all children may struggle in learning because of their personal difficulties, because they have some issue in their hearing, because they may have some issues in their brain. When I meet other children without any difficulties or differences but struggling in learning because of their environment, lack of family support, I was really surprised.

I met a group of children who has an activity of sorting ABCs and number card. My son actually could do so many things compared to other children who come to school without any academic preparation. That was an eye opening moment for us. The learning is designed for average learners, means that half of children has a chance to be successful and half of its children have a chance to fail. Since then, we expanded our target into struggling learners, including all children who are left behind whatever reason they have. We release our first flagship successful product in 2014, called Todo Math. Todo Math is designed for kindergarten to second graders who are struggling in following teacher's speed in math. We wanted to provide individualized support on children's basic counting and adding and subtracting activities. Children loved it. My child enjoyed it. We tested it in local school for a whole entire year. It was so fun.

Also, with the help of that popularity in East Asia, we could secure Series A from SoftBank Ventures Asia, and another is Tal education group in China. But when we released its Asian version, it became popular for a totally different reason. I heard some crazy thing from China, from one VC who was super excited that our application can make her 18 month old to prepare the kindergarten entrance exam. In early days, I was really upset because I designed this app to close the large gap in education. But when it released to the market, the most smartest and wealthiest parents found its value and used our app to make it early access to get advantage in the school system for their children. That was happening. We started to lose our motivation. We really didn't like the consequences, but that was reality, and we really tried to go to public education market because school is the only way to give those application and those benefits to children who actually need that. And we couldn't see any fast track to get into the school system in large scale. And then we heard about Global Learning XPRIZE competition.

For Global Learning XPRIZE competition, they want you to know can tablet based education helpful for children who couldn't access to a school system. They think that if one application prove it is possible, it can solve the large problem of children's education around the world. Elon Musk donated $15 million of prizes, and there are other donations, to run the largest pilot test that UN ever had in developing countries education. At that time, the number we heard, 254 million children. Some of XPRIZE's rule: all of the competitors' software should release as open source. They will give that final award only after all those teams spend millions of dollars to compete each other. And we actually see it as an opportunity to reach to the most needed people and prove our concept to school systems around the world. In Tanzania, we realized that five years old are watching video a lot more than playing games, and it was very different pattern from other countries, because young children really like to touch when they see touch screen. But when we try first version of Kitkit School, there was no log of touching the game. Our team tried three months to tune the tutorial level. We think that it's because children feel the game is too difficult, but we didn't have any idea that how we can make this small interaction even easier. It was a really big question for the team.

One day, a Tanzanian teacher who worked in Berkeley office came here to have a lunch with us. I share the, we don't know why this five years old think this tutorial is that difficult and doesn't like to touch. They only watched the video. Tanzanian staff said, "Yeah, it's so obvious." In Tanzania, young children being taught don't break anything at home. Most of goods are so precious. Those children strictly being taught not touching anything. When they see a valuable thing like tablet, they really afraid to touch. Children who already enter schools, who are already exposed to the world, they know what they can touch and what they can't touch. But for young children's mind, breaking will make very bad consequences, deeply rooted in children's mind. That's why they just watched videos, and we solve that issue by adding one video of a tutor saying, "You can touch it with this finger, just slightly in this way." Those videos actually resolve all of those issues immediately.

Children's failure in many ways is caused by educators' ignorance or their cultural bubble that is very different from the reality. Our experience is very limited and reflect our culture and our lifestyle. When we try to make something for children with special needs, who hadn't have any experience in all those technologies, the most important process is observation and pilot test. Because we learn, we sometimes need to fix basic idea. We build carefully for the last 18 month in one night. The judging results are that we have a tie. And there are two winners.

Great congratulations! Double congratulations! Yeah. The first winner, my friend Team Kitkit. We got 1 millions finalist's award and became a co-winner.

And received 5 million dollars from Elon Musk. I was pregnant, gave the birth of my second one, two weeks after the XPRIZE deadline. It was really tough, and it build a faith to the investors to support us with Series B round, continuously push us to enhance our software adopting the new technology. Even though parents are too skeptical about digital education, it still seems that governments are not interested in adopting this type of method, and then pandemic broke. Everybody is interested in digital based learning, and government already learned all the benefits of digital based remote learning that is tested in the most wealthy countries. Parents are widely open to test this digital-based new method, and they can see the value. All those change happen in last two years. From that moment, our B2C revenue increased ten times, up to today. Making better software in B2C market is the most important part of our daily work, because it is targeting our own children. We are not nonprofit.

We are a venture backed Silicon Valley startup, but we call it as a mission driven company, because my husband and me and our team member had other options. If we want to build a children's software, there must be easier way for us, just hired by big education companies. But there is a reason why Enuma exist and why we wanted Enuma to be successful.

Be mindful, sustainability. One of my investors said that you are not the fastest growing, but you can become the most successful company at the end. And as far as you are going toward to that path, speed on the way is not important. But there is a right speed to deal with this tough market, and there is a path that is a bit unique, because we are solving unique problems. Many of our methods are not written in the textbook, but we also see so many magical moments that support us to be closer to our ultimate solution.

I'm just feeling fortunate that we didn't fake ourselves to just answer how to make of ourselves most promising company to investors. We are working with the market, not with the investors. I'm feeling confident that we are on the right track, even though there is so much peer pressure. Many female leaders ask me about how to manage the family and work balance.

When I first build a company and tried to raise investment from angel investors, some people just say it in front of my face: "Hey, are you ready to replace your CEO into White male?" They really said so. "You can't be successful in the education field. You are not fluent in English. You are not well educated in the U.S. point of view."

"...and you're not one of customers in the United Schools." That was really, really painful, because I didn't know about that market. Sometimes I feel humiliated to say my story in front of very, very skeptical VC. In venture world, female founders had a harder time to fundraise.

And also some people believe that female founders has other difficulties, like pregnancy, growing a child, and all the social pressure surrounding them. I advise them to be brave. I know it is difficult, but we have other challenges that is even more difficult than that. Never undermine or never giving up before trying.