Oscar Pedroso, Founder, and CEO of Thimble, teaches kids engineering and programming through a subscription kit service and an online learning portal. A former frustrated classroom teacher, Oscar created his own method to make learning exciting and fun!
Oscar will show how he can help you:
Join us and seize the chance to interactively chat about your own current and future projects with a proven innovator!
Oscar Pedroso, Founder, and CEO of Thimble, teaches kids engineering and programming through a subscription kit service and an online learning portal. A former frustrated classroom teacher, Oscar created his own method to make learning exciting and fun!
Oscar will show how he can help you:
Join us and seize the chance to interactively chat about your own current and future projects with a proven innovator!
Good morning, everyone. And welcome to lifelong learners. We've got a number of episodes so far today. We have a special guest. We have Oscar Pedroso. He is the founder and CEO of thimble and Oscar. Good morning.
Oscar Pedroso:Good morning, Jackie. How are you? How are you?
Jackie Guzda:Good. So. In thimble. could you just tell us really briefly what the symbol is all about?
Oscar Pedroso:Sure. so nimble is an education technology business. We're based in New York and we provide coding and robotics age education for K-12 schools and homeschool.
Jackie Guzda:Great. And we also have Josh Chernikoff. Josh is my co-host. So Josh, say good morning to everyone.
Joshua Chernikoff:Good morning, everybody. Good morning to my friend, colleague mentor Oscar. Oh, you know,
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Joshua Chernikoff:plug that's that's and we got to pay the bills. So when Oscar and I meet up next time in San Diego, I can buy better scotch for you, but we got to pay the bills.
Jackie Guzda:So. So we have Oscar here today. And as he explained his P his company than bull, but Oscar and I had a conversation previous to today, and we both found out that we were frustrated teachers in the classroom. Oscar used to teach math and science in the class, and he developed them both. Other programs in order to deal with that frustration. So Oscar, tell us a little bit about how you went from the classroom to your Antech businesses now.
Oscar Pedroso:Sure. So I actually started in higher ed. I was, I was a first, college admission officer where I went to school at the university of Rochester. And I was an admission officer within the school of engineering. A lot of my work there, whether it's recruiting students in public schools, mostly inner city schools in Western New York and central new York's or as far west, as Buffalo as far east as all the. And, that's probably where I first started to see a major issue with kids. Just being familiar with different types of technology subjects, including robotics, coding, engineering, anything that you can think of that's as far as like skills that are in high demand. but then that was definitely. my experience as a teacher in middle school, I taught math and computer science. And you could definitely tell there, and there was just, I mean, a lack of programming for kids to learn about technology skills early on. I mean, you had your basic sciences, but there was very little outside of that. And so. For me, it really hit home when I was working with kids who looked just like me, but had no idea what engineering or coding was. And so while I didn't start symbol for like another 10 years after that, it was still at the very beginning of just my observation of how messed up our education system is. So that was really the inspiration at the beginning of it.
Jackie Guzda:well, you know, we are on a Facebook live and so there might be people in our audience today who are in the same boat that you were in those last 10 years. So if there's anybody out there who has a question, a comment in a way that maybe Oscar can provide you some guidance to develop your own programs or work on your own projects, please, please, please put them in the chat. So you can talk to him directly. So here we are Oscar, we're both frustrated in the classroom. I had that experience last night and things are not progressing. Can you tell us, please, once you started to develop your own programs, how that made things progress?
Oscar Pedroso:When you say programs, do you mean programs like at the school? Cause I was actually, when I was a teacher, I started a few programs there, but then. as an entrepreneur and starting these companies, I've also created programs as well. So I'm happy to touch on, yeah. We
Jackie Guzda:have a number of entrepreneurs in our, our audience today. So let's address it from that angle.
Oscar Pedroso:Sure. I mean, so my first business that I started in the education space was really geared towards getting kids to talk about their projects. so the concept of storytelling, just from an admission standpoint, when I was. Sitting on the other side of the table, interviewing kids. A lot of times they were brilliant, but just didn't have a way of really capturing their story. I had kids who had built their own computers, their own robots had figured out things that wouldn't really come into existence for a few years in the market even. And so, my, the first tool that I helped create was really just online project journals for kids. And it was geared for more engineering students, but, that was meant to just. Any student really, be able to showcase their project. Like an artist would showcase their own portfolio of sculptures and paintings that I was trying to do the same thing in the education space so they can better leverage, their experience to land an internship or a job. Fast forward to what we're doing today with nimble we're the program that we have, the curriculum that we've set aside is really for middle schooler and high schoolers to get that exposure, give them an option to consider. Robotics coding and other technology disciplines without becoming fearful of it. Later down the line, we find that a lot of kids that enter high school aren't really ready to join a robotics team. And in many cases, the reason is because they don't have any sort of theater program in the district, or they just don't have any sort of exposure. So they come up with their own opinions of, of what robotics and coding are, which ends up turning into. You know, robotics is not cool when in reality it's just, it's, it's there because it's, it's nowadays you can go into any field and there's some kind of technology behind it, and there's much more out there than just business law and, and medicine. So really the program that we have is meant to give that exposure, create more hands-on activities for kids, and then hopefully get them to have their own skill sets so they can go on and become part of these programs that already existed there.
Joshua Chernikoff:Hmm, what, what, can I ask? What, what happened? I consider Oscar, a friend, a colleague, and a mentor, but I didn't necessarily know about the first business, what happened to the first business, because there are a lot of entrepreneurs and the answer could be it failed, which is perfectly wonderful because we all have to do those things. So what happened to the first business?
Oscar Pedroso:Well, so higher ed really tough. So, what ended up happening was we had the. Really cool. MVP, minimum viable product. For those of you who don't know that acronym, it's just a basic. product at the time was just a very rough prototype that we were putting in front of schools. And we actually were able to sell into a couple, two and four year colleges. But, what we realized was the higher ed industry is very, very competitive and really tough to get into. If you don't have the relation, right. Relationships set in place, and you don't have enough capital to, basically get through that long sales cycle. So what ended up happening one, I figured out that this was not sustainable, unless I can raise a million bucks plus, that wasn't gonna happen. Yeah. Right. Even 10 years later, it's still hard. but you know, a lot, I had to make a decision, basically. I either had to. or throwing the towel and call it a day and I don't like to give up. So, one of the things I started to realize, Well, the name of the company then was called grad fly. So what I noticed was happening on the graphite website is there was a forum of people talking about robots and drones and programming. And there was a combination of hobbyists and parents on the platform and students. But I would say like a lot of people, one frustration that I kept hearing over and over again on the website was that people. Had this a need, curiosity to learn. They just didn't know where to start. So it's like if they wanted to build their, like a robot, for example, they weren't sure what the first steps might be, where to source the components. Once they had the components, how do you actually put things together? And, and it was through that insight that I was, I spent like three months in the dark just trying to figure it out. one of the most pivotal moments was when we did an AMA on Reddit. And we just ended up posing. Like what if we created a community for people to learn how to build these type of projects, but we create we'd supply those materials for you. And then we create lessons for you on how to build them. and we got like 1500 followers that first week just from that. So we ended up not throwing in the towel. We ended up pivoting. And so the original business that I started, we ended up just changing the name. We kept the same tax ID number. So we went from, hi us, building a business in higher ed to building a business in K-12.
Jackie Guzda:So awesome. Oscar. I teach film and media arts and all of that. but this sounds really fun building robots. And, and what else, what else did you teach the kids?
Oscar Pedroso:Well, so robots is just like one fragment of, of technologies. I mean, there's so much out there. It's, it's funny. Cause I talked to a lot of schools on a daily basis and there are every time I'm, you know, I do a lot of cold calling and any school that has. Usually the first thing that schools say, when I'm talking to a principal or a teacher, they're like, oh, we already have a robotics program. But I always like to dig in a little bit. I'm like, well, what else are you doing other than robots? Like, what are you, what are you doing to teach your kids about agricultural technology? What are you doing to teach them about video game design and cybersecurity and, music and audio engineering. And a lot of times I ended up getting silence on the other end because they don't really have anything. So the program is meant to really give them, give kids a chance to build all sorts of devices, so that they can learn about like one of our projects is, it's a digital company. Or the kids learn about GPS and navigation. Nowadays, we have GPS on our, in all of our vehicles and we use apps like ways and Google maps to get around, but we've never really stopped and think about how the technology works. And so our program is really meant to be hands-on, but also educate kids about. You know, everyday components that they use, even components that are in their own cell phone. You know, we take this for granted, but a lot of our projects use components that are found in devices like cell phones and computers, and they ended up building something else entirely. But, you know, it's less of a toy and more like real life components that let's say an engineer. IBM or general electric is using to build some who knows massive, massive project that they're going to break the market at some point. But that's the example of like giving kids that, that exposure to play with with components like that at a, at a very, introductory level, Jackie
Joshua Chernikoff:we're we're, we're lucky. that Dotan is not hosting this week because Dotan and Oscar could go down a super long rabbit hole. You know, about this stuff, because we found out that when we sat at ASU GSV, the conference in San Diego, that Oscar and Tom were, were many worlds away, but were, you know, playing. At sixth grade and seventh grade, and probably younger with computers and programming, things like that. So if we had gone down that rabbit hole as a listener, I might've kind of, trailed off, but you know, what I think is really cool about Oscar among, among many other things to that, he is truly equal parts operator and sales person. And you got like, You got, a glimpse into that right then and there, you know, in terms of how do you approach these principles and, and they all potentially say the same thing, and this is how you engage them in a conversation, but then, you know, Oscars, you know, also just, obviously an amazing operator to, to be able to literally get these components. And there it's beautiful, you know, I don't want to take us too far off track, but, but you know, the way that apple packages product. Oscars Oscars, you know, hot on their tail there in terms of when these kids get their products at home. I mean, it's really a beautiful packaging. So all those components gotta be sourced. They got to get in there, they got to get to the homes. So, you know, this is a for people are watching, you know, if you think that you can be as good operator and sales person, it's not so easy. Oscar is very good. That's a really
Oscar Pedroso:cool learning. We all are.
Jackie Guzda:So if we go back into those years, again, you were talking about how you created this Reddit community for the people that are out there trying to pick your brain right now. What, what paths of finding funding would you suggest for that? Maybe something think.
Oscar Pedroso:So when we decided we wanted to move forward with building out the symbol, we knew it was going to take a certain amount of capital, a certain amount of time, a certain amount of people to bring the idea to life. at the time, my co-founder and I, we had committed to each other in your. When you were working with a founder or co-founder, you're basically married to that person. So, but we had very limited amount of money in her bank accounts. So we were looking for creative ways to bring this to market. We had done a ton of market research at that point, and we were able to get some friends and family funding along the way. But to really create a business that's that contains both hardware and software. We knew it was going to take quite a bit of money to bring it to life. So we ended up doing some research on, various crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo or Kickstarter, and we ultimately ended up going with Kickstarter. just cause that's where we found. There were more educational type projects that were, were brought to life. So we ended up choosing that as a way to, to raise our initial capital or, and so that was, let's see, spring of 2015 is when we made the decision to do that. And then it took us about six months to launch it. So we went live December of 2015. And our goal initially was to raise$25,000. That was what our manufacturer at the time said would be the least amount of money would be to order product, you know, to, to, for the men to basically get the minimum order quantity there. And, and so it was a one month campaign and we ended up selling about. Just shy of$300,000. And that was really what propelled us into, into business. And that was such a huge shock for us because we'd never had any of that kind of success before. And, and so that was really like one of the first moments where we knew like, okay, there's something here. Clearly. There's something here. I mean, we knew that with the Reddit, like when we had that many people who sign up for our newsletter, but then the Kickstarter really just validated it even more that there was a business opportunity well,
Jackie Guzda:there must have been something that you did to get that amount of money through Kickstarter, because a lot of people put their projects up on Kickstarter and the other crowdfunding sources and nothing. So what's the trick.
Oscar Pedroso:you know, it's, it's a combination of things I wouldn't necessarily say. It's just one thing. One is like you, you want, you want to make sure you're actually solving a need. I don't know that you can just go on to Kickstarter with a random. Business idea and get that kind of funding. So we want it to Kickstarter with this knowledge, this market research, and we had somewhat of a following. But then I guess the next step was making sure that we can very clearly articulate our business idea and vision in a super short video. That was well-made. and then we could also articulate that in the copy of the campaign. And so the combination of both those things really is what made that campaign go to life. We were lucky that we had the support of Kickstarter and we were able to get some media to write about the, our story and campaign and our reasons for doing that And we, a lot of that, we started locally. We created a lot of hype here in New York. We reached out to every person in our networks, going back all the way to high school. and then every day of the campaign, we were on our computers, reaching out to editors writers. Different publications, different blogs, parent blogs, toy blogs, technology blogs.
Joshua Chernikoff:sorry, how much before we leave that part that you talking about, you know, being very specific because I've never done a Kickstarter campaign. I took, other route of raising money with, partners, which is a whole nother. We could spend hours on that, but you went the Kickstarter route. Cool. Can you isolate, you know, for us, like here's what we presented in the Kickstarter campaign that raised 300 grand and here is the business today.
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah. I mean, so you're asking like the things we did that led up to the campaign and made it successful. Yeah. Like, but that
Joshua Chernikoff:obviously worked, but you can't. I don't think you can't just raise the 300 K and say, we're set businesses done. We're going to, you know, we're going to be if you're a million dollar company, but from that, that writing that you did in that campaign, you created, what ha how has the business changed? You know, you and I have talked about this, I think, but like selling to schools versus selling to parents, you know, Selling, you know, in person. And we need to talk about, you know, going online, you know, and obviously one of the reasons we're here is click too, but you know, how much has the business kind of fluctuated from that original Kickstarter campaign?
Oscar Pedroso:It has quite a bit. We had our eyes set on the direct to consumer market. So a majority of the people that had expressed interest in what we were doing at the time were mostly hobbyists and parents. And so, You know, that was our go-to market is sells subscriptions where you get a different kit in the mail. You log onto our website and learn to build these, how to build these projects from start to finish over time, we started meeting parents that identified as teachers and principals, different kinds of administrators with an interest rate. We're reaching out to us asking if we'd ever planned to bring the product into the classroom for afterschool programs, which had always been, I mean, that was, that was why I started nimble because, I was really looking to, to change, to create some kind of impact and change in the education space. In the K-12. We just saw that low-hanging fruit was to first start in the consumer market, but, we got our first per school purchase two years after we launched the Kickstarter campaign in 2018. And that was what, the school here in Buffalo, which was great because. They were like five minutes from our office. We, we treated it as a pilot and as a way to learn how to sell into schools. And we quickly got feedback on what we needed to do to improve the product. And we didn't have any kind of professional development for teachers. We didn't have any sort of alignment to curriculum standards, which we all know now today, as we're actively selling to schools is important. you know, fast forward to 2021 after two crazy years of the. we're really only focusing on schools now, you know, we're still, we still have that direct to consumer model, but it's really just a fraction of the overall business. But a lot of the learnings that we went through these past few years helped us get to where we are now.
Jackie Guzda:So how, how did the pandemic affect your business? I know you said it was crazy, but what happened and more importantly, did you learn anything about your business during the pandemic?
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah, we, we were ready to start. We're working with schools at the end of 2019, we had gone through an accelerator in Boston called LearnLaunch and all of our time spent there was building a strategy and plans for selling into schools. And then March of 2020 happens. And all those plans, we basically had to just pause what we were doing. To figure out what was happening next, because any, any school we, that we were calling, they were just like, there's no way there's, this is not a priority right now. Like we're, we don't even know what's going on.
Joshua Chernikoff:That was the same time that the letter of intent that I had to have my business get acquired, that company said, this is not the right time. So it was a lot of that going on at that
Oscar Pedroso:point. Right, right. so the, the beauty of being a small company is you can pivot very quickly. And I I'd say. In a week, we had made a decision to revert back to our direct to consumer model. With the exception that this time we were do things a little differently. Historically. I mean, when we first launched the business, we were shipping out a kit every every month. If used to be people were subscribing, they would get a kit every month. we ended up reducing the number of months to, so as opposed to 12 months a year, you're getting, you know, 12 kits it's now, once a quarter. And so you get a kit every, every three. months And we introduced live classes because that was now that everybody, I think it was like 95% of schools stepped down. There was a demand for parents to find extracurricular activities, any sort of a stem enrichment, but. clearly hands-on and then some kind of virtual component there where the kids are learning from home. I think we,
Joshua Chernikoff:this is our, this is our chance, Jackie. This is our chance he's talking live classes, cohort based he's he's teeing it up for us.
Oscar Pedroso:Yes. And now it was really, so we, we ended up surveying all of our previous customers first asking them if this was something that they would want for their own kids. And, and I mean, we had a great response rate for, for introducing live classes and, and having a quarterly kits as opposed to monthly. And that was really the beginning of that. So we spent. The pandemic, really just focusing on the direct to consumer market and then 2021, as things went back to in-person instruction, we started going back and we started to take the cobwebs off of our K-12 plans from 2019, and finally putting them into action.
Jackie Guzda:So you had mentioned that you had been in the business accelerator or incubator. You talked about crowd funding and your steps all the way up. How did you get into one of those?
Oscar Pedroso:Well, we've been through a few. the one in Boston was LearnLaunch. We'd been through house Yon in DC. We've gone through seed spot, Telluride venture accelerator. These are normally, programs that lasts anywhere between three to six months. And you get into them by applying to them through an application sometime with their applications on their own websites. I believe there's f6s.Com where a lot of, accelerators and incubators use that website as a portal for applying to their programs. That's how we found out about, them found out about those and connected with other founders to, to, to learn more, see if it was worth it or not.
Jackie Guzda:So you were in LearnLaunch. Do you remember the names of other ones that people might be interested in?
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah, so learn launch accelerator, and then there was a, so that one was, did that one's for education tech. Then there's Halcyon incubator, which is based in DC, that one's for social impact companies. Seed spot is another one. That one we went through virtually during the pandemic. And that was, for social impact companies as well. And then Telluride venture accelerator. they're based in Telluride, Colorado. So that was back in 2017. That was really more across the board. Any, any company could apply and be part of the program, which had to live in Colorado for six months. And we ended up doing that. And that was an amazing experience to be out there. But those are the few that we've found through.
Jackie Guzda:Okay. So you're you're well, the audience that we have now, are you saying basically just to Google these names and to contact them?
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah. Most of these programs have a program managers they're in charge of the application process. typically I would reach out and ask questions about the program. I would normally ask to be connected to any alumni that were part of the program at some point, just to see what their experience was like and see if it was worth. and then from there, I just make the decision to apply. I've applied to a few others as well, but these were the ones that we were accepted at. It's a lot of,
Joshua Chernikoff:it's a lot of stepping stones, right? I mean, the have these, we're talking about accelerators incubators and that stepping stones, and you tell the story of the business from direct to consumer to pandemic. And now we're back to selling the schools, something that you and I talk about a lot. I think for people out there, it's just, you know, posture tells this story in a. A really relaxed way that he does pretty much everything else, but recognize that like there's so much blood, sweat, and tears that goes into all of this and pivoting and you make that decision in a week and the pandemic comes and you had all these plans to sell the schools. And you're like, no, we're going back to dirt, you know, selling to parents. And so, you know, Oscar, you, you obviously delivered. In like, Hey, this is what happened, but maybe for people out there to recognize, cause this may be the low point of their business right now, you know that like there's a pivot and there's, there's a way out and up for sure. and it
Jackie Guzda:sounds like, yeah, it sounds like Oscar is taking the advice that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah, definitely. Yeah. There've been some sleepless nights and you know, there are moments where I was like, oh my goodness, how am I going to get through this? But I don't know when you really want it, when, when you're passionate about something and, you know, Surprise myself sometimes where, you know, I was confronted with like several challenges. It's a roller coaster and, and there's operates
Joshua Chernikoff:rollercoaster of challenges and opportunities. Right. And one of the opportunities we've been talking about, which I think that people probably also in this audience are here to, to get your thoughts on would be the ability to, pivot. Yes. But also the, you know, the ultimate. you know, which would be online, you know? So what was your experience, you know, going online, are you going to embrace the hybrid? Because obviously we've got to get back to in person, but the opportunity is worldwide online. So what's your thoughts on that?
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah, as far as, well, one quick question for you is, are you asking more for like during the pandemic or post pandemic or
Joshua Chernikoff:you don't get to ask any questions? no, this is, this is now, this is now. I mean, because I think we've entered, we've gone from pre pandemic, you know, maybe nothing online to everything online during, and now we got to. We believe, you know, from the click to standpoint, talking to dotage on, you know, future man, which you've talked about the hybrid here, the hybrid world. So what are your thoughts on the hybrid world? Because you know, you have your business model, but you also have this opportunity staring you in the face here of, of, of cohort-based courses
Oscar Pedroso:online. Yeah, I think it's going to be to, I mean, there was already a hybrid before the pandemic, but I think it came to light for sure. During, and then post, I mean, we're still in the dynamic, so, but, I think it's, if anything, I think people have learned that, hybrid is, is going to be the future of, of learning. just because I think people have realized how. convenient. It can be to, to learn online. I mean, it's not always the same when you have something hands-on but like, I think it's going to be the way we educate the masses for people who don't have access to that kind of education or didn't previously, I think it's now just open the flood gates basically. So. It will, how easy that is as we're going to continue to improve that model on our, on the direct to consumer side, and there's opportunity to do that on the K-12 side. As we work with these schools, a lot of schools, obviously they're going back to in-person, but a lot of them are asking, can we still, if we still have hybrid because not every, not every student at some of these schools are fully in person for whatever reason. And so, you know, that's, that's another, that's like a challenge on our product roadmap right now. Yeah, we're, we're looking to spend most of our time servicing these schools in person, but there's also a need for some of these students to continue working on these type of projects at home. So you know that there's a solution out there. I wonder if there's a solution out there to help out. I wonder.
Jackie Guzda:Hey, Oscar, how, how does this hybrid situation help facilitate more engagement by the students? inspire them to really want to work because I'm finding that after we were totally online at my university, we went back to in-person. And I'm not finding that my students are particularly inspired to be back on the ground as the administrators insisted they would. So how can your development, so the developments of others help inspire our students to become better students?
Oscar Pedroso:Well, it's interesting. Cause I was just talking to a family that's subscribed to the symbol and their, their son and daughter are back in person in the classroom at their school, but their school still lacks a robotics program. They don't. The school is planning on building out of X team and Lego Mindstorms and all this. But a lot of those things don't exist with the only way they can get it is at home through symbol and possibly other companies that are doing something similar. And in many cases, these kids sometimes know they already have an interest. So when they receive one of our kits and sign up for classes, They are the most excited in some of our classes. They're the first ones to raise their hands. They're the first ones to help other students in our classes. So it's, it's opened their world up a little bit because now. Either education. They weren't previously getting in their own classrooms at school. They now have access to that at home. And many cases they're able to get a sibling to join. Sometimes it's a bonding experience for the entire family. We've had mom and dads set aside their kids while they're taking classes. And that's just something you really can't replicate anywhere else. so, and many in many cases, the, the nice thing is at this point, We've had had kids that signed up last March that are still with us a year and a half later. I mean, and the growth is amazing. We've actually started doing some case studies on some students that are now like. Seven to eight kids in, they're learning how to solder. They they're learning about more advanced programming languages. some of them I've been able to connect with one-on-one via zoom, just to ask, like, what are projects you're looking to build? What what's, why you're, you know, like it's just, I could go down another rabbit hole here, just talking about that whole thing, but it's just a whole separate world that the kids weren't quite exposed to before that they're now getting, you know, in their own. At home,
Jackie Guzda:Josh. I, I think that Oscar's future man too.
Joshua Chernikoff:Yeah, but actually I want to, I mean, he's definitely a future man, for sure. That's why he's got this business that is growing exponentially, but also Oscar. I mean, again, it was fascinating for me because. Sitting listening to you and Delta talk. I didn't do any of these things. It just really didn't interest me, you know? so what would it have been like if, if you know, when you were 6, 7, 8, when you were doing these things, and if you had symbol, I mean, you made it through, but what would life have been like? Had you had a, an amazing box delivered to your home with a follow on conversation with somebody like you saying, Hey, tell me what's working so well, what would have been like for you?
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah. You know, I'm a pro I'm a child of the eighties. So, you know, back then I was playing around with transformers and GI Joes and who knows what else? But. I know like school was very challenging for me because technically my first language is Spanish. So, you know, my parents are immigrants from Honduras. So they came to the us, they weren't really aware, or they didn't really know a lot about how the education system worked here. So I was kind of just thrown into school and, it was tough because I was learning English and, but I felt like I wasn't really given that like extra nudge to, to pursue something. Robotics and coding. I mean, if you would've asked me about that when I was six, I would have been like, what are you talking about? I don't know what, I don't know what that is. It wasn't until like middle school where I actually had. W one of my friends was really into robotics and that's how I ended up getting signed up to the robotics team in high school, not knowing very much, but I know that my life would have been completely different. Had I had it nimble kit or something similar, back in the day, just to at least get some bearings. And if that's something that I really wanted to pursue, but there was really none of that.
Jackie Guzda:Yeah, you you're talking about a whole new market today because when I was teaching at Los Angeles unified school district, there were a hundred and I forget how many different languages spoken in that school system. And it sounds like those kids now were you back in the eighties and how something like simple could have help those kids.
Oscar Pedroso:Definitely. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. And I still have conversations with teachers who are administrators that have that exempt the same problem, where they have kids from all different walks of life. But, they don't really know how to spark any sort of curiosity around this and almost every call that I have with the school. They're trying to just generate some kind of excitement early on in elementary school, just to start that feeder program into middle school and high school. The other thing too, is because of the, all these languages we're working with the school in Florida, where the majority of students speak Creole. And one of the requests from the district was if we could translate our material into Creel and that's actually a big goal of mine is to translate our material into all different languages, including Spanish, German, French, so that we can level the playing field for students out there who might consider language as a barrier. Although I say that loosely, because a lot of times you could have, we've had many kids who don't speak English very well, and they still Excel, with the hands-on component and the coding as well. But we still want that added layer there for ease of use, because it does help with.
Joshua Chernikoff:Hmm.
Jackie Guzda:Wow. That's amazing. So this is great. What, what does the future hold for thimble and Oscar?
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah, it's you know, it's funny. I it's a question, mark. I feel like I'm, I can only focus on three to six months ahead, you know? Someone asked me like the five-year question, where do you see yourself in five years? I'm like, ah, I don't know, but I do have ideas. I mean, one is to open it up. So it's not just a stem education or it is stem, but we touch on other subjects like chemistry, geology, more engineering, you know, we're very much a curriculum that focuses on computer engineering and programming, which is very niche. and the skills you're learning. I mean, they could be applied in so many other areas. so one is continue doing what we're doing now. Our number one request is to build out curriculum for pre-K through fourth grade. So we have a product roadmap for that. Right now it's a segue, more an introductory curriculum into a more intermediate and advanced curriculum that we have now. And then we are also working on curriculum. Did this unnecessarily. until the use of kits. So like more like courses on how to learn, how to program. And then also, we just submitted a national science foundation grant on, augmented reality. Project-based learning where, you know, instead of having a kit in front of you, you're now building it in an augmented reality space, which sometimes can be cost-effective for schools when they can't afford materials, but then having that as a stepping stone. So once the kids do know how to build projects in an augmented reality space, they can then go on. Move into like the real hands-on part or they're, they're now more familiar, than they were before. So there's a few things there.
Joshua Chernikoff:Jackie, I think what you're hearing is like, you know, the classic entrepreneur, which is us, cause like, I don't know. But I'm going to try a lot and one of these is going to hit and it's going to be fantastic. But in the meantime, you know, you've clearly you figured out what you're doing, you know, through, through, relatively to the pandemic at this point. But while you say, I don't know what I'm going to do in the next three to five years, you do know you're going to try.
Oscar Pedroso:Oh, yeah. There's no doubt. I mean, I have, and it, and it isn't that I don't know, like after doing this for almost 10 years of being an entrepreneur for 10 years, I know when, like something is sticking, you know, like you throw a bunch of stuff at a, at a wall or something's going to stick, but sometimes you see a pattern. And so being able to identify like certain things that are working for your customers, that's what I like to, I ended up writing those down and including them in my 18 month plan. and even if we don't get to it, we know that that's just something that we keep hearing. So, and that a lot of times can end up becoming what you're going to be working on three to five years from now. but, yeah, I digress, but for sure,
Joshua Chernikoff:I
Jackie Guzda:mean, I, I think this is absolutely fascinating. You you're a man with big ideas.
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah. There's so many, there isn't enough. There isn't enough time to do all of that, unfortunately.
Joshua Chernikoff:Well, but there's a lot of time. Right. And you're not going anywhere and the business isn't going anywhere and you've got a lot of energy. So, so how do you get there? You know, how do you, you take these big ideas? How do you get. And, and, and there being success. And obviously we could just say, you know, took out successes, but how do you try all these different things and then, and you know, and feel good about it?
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah. Three to five priorities, small experiments. making tough decisions, you know, are we going to do this or not? If not, let's set aside that on the back burner, here's, what's working. Let's continue to expand on this. but yeah, that, and then pivoting.
Joshua Chernikoff:So opportunities, pivot decision, basically rinse, repeat opportunity, pivot decision. Is it work?
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah, for sure. And you know, it takes a village to build a company. So I've, I've also relied on a lot of, people like I'm gonna throw out John, his name out there, who I know, you know, really well, Josh, I don't think
Joshua Chernikoff:we've had a show that John GaN was a name or hair. Hasn't been brought up on Jackie, but yes. Bring John back in
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah. John came into my life, April of 2020 when I was in the middle of pivoting. And he was just such a great soundboard. And clearly he's so knowledgeable about a lot of things, but he was one of the first people to help me land on our initial business model or newer business model that we still have going on right now. I came into
Joshua Chernikoff:my life in October of 2020. Jackie, you, yeah.
Jackie Guzda:So we got to have John back, I think, because there's more to talk about. but I, you know, how skirt someone with your imagination and innovation. We have a lot of people who are listening to you right now, who are starting a projects, but they might have in the back of their mind, the idea that what they develop now might not be appropriate for the future. Where do you see, where do you see the future of education going?
Oscar Pedroso:Oh, that's such a little big question. I mean, I can see technology really well. Let me start with schools are like five to 10 years behind everyone else. And so I, and this is just based off of the many conversations I have with teachers and administrators. And it's not just stem. I mean, there's literacy. There's, after-school programming, there's transportation. There there's even. How administration does its own job. There's just, there's so many old school ways of doing things and people haven't quite caught up to the 21st century. So even in just those things that I just mentioned, like literally, visual literacy, filling the, achievement gap, homework gap. And then we're part of this program called AT&T aspire right now. And what I love about the program is they have, they're focusing on all of the big education problems that no one's really addressing right now. But I would say that's where the future is going is, like how do we get kids to learn at home? how do we introduce students who don't speak English? How do we introduce them to these stem subjects? in their own languages, how do we make it easy for teachers who are being displaced from their English and social studies, teaching positions to teach things like stem, how do we, how do we educate them? How do we train them? I feel like that's where we're where things are going, is providing more tools. I'm thinking, getting administrators that think a little more creatively about how they're doing their job and understanding that this is like really, really important because I mean, we've, it took a pandemic to, to realize that the, Educational system is pretty screwed up. and then there's a lot that needs to be done. So, I mean, I could, I could throw a list of different problems, but I think it's going to take like a whole world of entrepreneurs to solve them, for sure. I don't know if that helps. I mean, there's some, I don't know how much of a rabbit hole you want me to go down.
Jackie Guzda:No, that wasn't a rabbit hole that answered the questions from some of the people who are watching and listening to you right now.
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're, we're focused on just one thing and that's just like stem and how to make that accessible to kids so that they can consider an education or career path in stem as far as other areas that could improve, improve in education. It's going to take a whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs working together to come up with solutions. one of the things I love about Josh and his formerly working at flux, you know, they, they, they were thinking about partnering together because one of the problems we hear schools are having is they don't have any teachers to run any of these programs that we're currently providing for schools. And so one opportunity has been to work with flex, to. recruit teachers to be able to run these programs in person at these schools, which is something we technically can't do. We just don't have the bandwidth to go out and find talent. and so that's like an example of like, where I see like things going is like, how do we get teachers to come into these classrooms or, or people on the outside to come in and teach these classes when the school doesn't really have any of that.
Joshua Chernikoff:Another classic classic example, Jackie. Of there's just no, as, as the current CEO of flex would say, whose father told us this be a fountain, not a drain, you know, there's no, in Oscar, there's only fountains, right? There's only like, okay, you're talking to a school district and they say, this is fantastic, but we need something afterschool. Okay. It's not something we're so good at, but let me talk to this group who knows it very well. And let us figure out how we're going to. No skin off your back. No work on your plate. We've got it. And so this is just another classic example. I think of, you know, of the pivot, you know, and the pivot might mean relying on somebody else, but nonetheless you pivot so that you can deliver. Hmm.
Jackie Guzda:So now that we know Oscar's amazing vision for the future for education, what's the future for Oscar and thimble.
Oscar Pedroso:I have no idea. I know, I know, I know that I'm I love what I'm doing now and I'm going to continue growing the business. we're gonna, we, we were just awarded 15 district wide contracts throughout the U S we're focused on that. we're still a small company. I find that I'm wearing many, many hats, so I just hired my first two sales folks to help me just focus on other, on other things. Part of me has thought about maybe selling the business at some point in the future. I've thought about staying with them over the rest of my life. I've also thought about other entrepreneurial ideas that I have unrelated to education that I'd love to do. And those are those. I consider those options and I'm really just going with the flow. Like I know what I want to achieve over the next year and a half. And at some point next year, I'll probably plan for the next year and a half. And I'm just going, going based on how we're doing right now. All I know is like, I love what we're doing in the sense that we're getting into schools. We're educating kids. I have parents who are, have my cell phone number who are thanking me for, you know, the experience that we've brought to their home because their kids pre and during, and post dependent and post pandemic have just really benefited from. One building some really cool projects at home and have developed a new interest. That test turned into other things like we, we just had, I just had a student that reached out to me. He started using thimble back in 2016. So that was my wife's talking, who just got into Caltech, Amazing engineering school, but, he reached out well, he and his parents reached out. Thank you, the company, us and my team for, for, the experience he had a few years ago, because it was a stepping stone for, for wanting to become an engineer and applying to Caltech. And he actually reached out at one point because I have an admissions background, asking if, if, we can help craft this story. But anyways, yeah, that's just an example of. Some of the things that make the company worth it and make me want to stay with it for a long time, as far as what ends up happening, you know, later down the line. I'm not sure, but we'll see,
Joshua Chernikoff:I'll tell you Jackie, about, about Oscar, the two things that he does that are going, that make him successful is he's a, he's a good entrepreneur. He's a good person. And that's what you heard right there. I mean, he ran a good business and makes himself available and people rely on him. And so for, I think. the entrepreneurs out there who are listening, like you can do both and you should try and be a good entrepreneur and as good a person.
Jackie Guzda:I think that's a fantastic way to put it because he is a good entrepreneur entrepreneur as well as his intent
Joshua Chernikoff:is true. Yeah. Yeah.
Jackie Guzda:But Josh, might you have any suggestions, any guidance for Oscar for the future?
Joshua Chernikoff:Oscar. And I have this, I think pretty cool relationship where we both see each other. I hope he sees me as somebody he can rely on as a mentor cause I've done a few things he hasn't and then vice versa. And to be totally honest right now, as I kind of go into the consulting world and I, I help other businesses grow. No, I'm relying on Oscar as, as a sounding board. I think he's got a, a business appraisal coming from me in the next week. I've been working on it. I know I owe you that, to help me out a little bit. So, you know, you know, I, I can't necessarily give advice to Oscar on some of this stuff, but some of the stuff I can. And so I guess the, the idea here is just to find people that you, you get along with that you respect. That can push on you and vice versa. So, you know, go out there and find your Oscar and that'll help you a lot.
Oscar Pedroso:Yeah. Yeah. Similarly, I was thinking the other day, like, this is when we were texting each other through Vox, Josh, like how cool it would be to, to work on a business together at some point. And that's like the beauty of, of, of being an entrepreneur is you get to meet other founders. and th this is not the case for every founder, but more, more often than not, you're going to meet people. You really just enjoy being with, and you come up with really cool ideas. And you've been thinking about like the possibility of working with and working with them. Josh is one of them. There's another guy that I know that I've been working with for years. Things, Lillian, every time I talked to him, like, when are we going to start a business together? You know, like, that's like maybe next steps. That's what it is, you know, is, is, sitting down with, with some of these friends that I've met over the years and seeing where they are in their lives and seeing if there's an opportunity to, to create something else, you know, whether it's related to education or not, we have a summit in
Joshua Chernikoff:Mexico, Jackie can moderate the whole thing and then we'll do. Let's do it right down here. Yeah.
Jackie Guzda:Sounds fantastic. So, I want to thank you gentlemen, but the four we go because we're running out of time as usual. I just want to mention to our Facebook group community that you heard, both Josh and Oscar talking and their message at the very end was it is a community just like we are building on Facebook right now, meeting other like-minded. Like hearted people to make our dreams come true. So having said that, I just want to remind you that our sponsor, that Andrew Berry is having his webinar. And, please note that he will. A guest on lifelong educators on October 6th, but we are starting half an hour earlier. So that will be 11:00 AM. Eastern standard time. Again, Andrew battery will be here on October 6th, 11:00 AM. Eastern standard time to become another pillar in our community. So having said that I want to thank very much Josh and Oscar for sharing their insight today. So anything you want to say, gentlemen, before we sign off?
Oscar Pedroso:Thank you so much for, for having me also, if anybody ever has any questions, I always love to talk to, I always love talking to newbie entrepreneurs that are thinking about, Starting their own gig. yeah, you can reach me@oscaratnimble.io. Ask me any question.io. That's such a funny app. I love that app. That's fun. And now he's,
Joshua Chernikoff:he, he's not only willing to help newbie people, but you know, and being entrepreneurs, but he helps people have failed multiple times present company included. So get his Voxer and he'll, he'll talk to all day long off and on.
Jackie Guzda:Okay guys. Thank you so very much. Thank you for your insight. And we will see you next week.
Oscar Pedroso:Thank you, Jackie.