The Story Behind Prototype 5.0
3 months ago, we asked ourselves a difficult question: do our products actually make learning fun? Or did we just sugar coat learning with common gamification elements? Honestly, it was the latter. And it was difficult to admit that we had spent 2 years building something that did not actually make learning fun.
2-year-old companies usually have good numbers to show potential growth. Revenue that showed potential market fit. And while our platform had almost a 2-times month-on-month growth, the drop-off rate was extremely high. Upon talking to our users, we realised that our product fell far from innovative. To them, our platform was merely an “online assessment book”.
We were at a cross-road: put all growth to a halt and go back to improve the product (basically square one) or continue to grow the business. This was a tough choice because our resources only permitted us to choose one or the other. And we chose the former.
It was a huge risk. Our financials were basically put to a standstill. Our bank numbers just kept declining every month. Worst of all, this choice was advised against by many people. We had advisors, friends and interviewers questioning the decision we made. “Aren’t you a business? Shouldn’t you be making money first? You should just leave the product as it is.” “Are you doing things based on too much your intuition?” “How long are you going to do this for? You can’t keep paying yourselves this amount as a salary?” While I know that these questions are of the best intentions, they honestly made me feel like we made a huge mistake.
Honestly, if not for my co-founder, Wong Lei, I would have caved in halfway. I would have succumbed to taking whatever we had and tried to monetise it. But her expectation of achieving nothing short of fun pushed us to pursue even more. And looking back today, I realised that we had made the right choice. We decided to follow our heart. And following our heart has brought us to create a game that truly achieves what we strove to do in the first place: making learning fun for kids.
I’m really proud to introduce our Prototype 5.0: a multi-team game where teams compete with each other to collect as many wrong statements as possible. This is definitely not the final version of the game, but I am hopeful that this game creates a future that truly combines learning and games into one. While there are a lot more challenges that lie ahead, I am confident that by staying true to who we are, we can overcome any obstacle. You knowing that it is the right choice is already enough. I hope this journey inspires more people to follow their heart.
