What I learned from pitching in Dubai and Western University

I'm a 15-year-old passionate about leveraging learning science and AI to build a better education for all. Every 2 weeks, I post a peek into my journey. Here's Issue #1.

Hey, I’m Krishiv.

I’m a 15-year-old from Toronto passionate about AI in education. I’m building Aceflow.org, a suite of AI-powered education tools that accelerate K - 12 learning outcomes. We’re backed by Microsoft for Startups and Emergent Ventures, and I’ve presented our work at GITEX Global, World Summit AI, and Microsoft Canada’s HQ. When people ask me how I’m balancing high school with this journey, I say it’s because I’m obsessed. Global human potential is on the line.

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Rundown of the last 2 months:

Here’s the rundown of my journey’s last 2 months. I’ll go deeper into my favourite pieces later in this newsletter.

• Flew to Dubai and presented Aceflow at GITEX Global

• Showcased Aceflow at Western University

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Hit 1,400 waitlist sign-ups on Aceflow

Presenting Aceflow at the world’s largest tech and startup show (180,000 attendees )

After my 13-hour flight from Toronto, I landed in a whole new world.

I’ve been working on Aceflow for half a year. When I first started, I was just figuring out how to code a Chrome extension. The thought of flying internationally to present what Aceflow would become never crossed my mind.

Consistency compounds.

I knew I had to make the most out of this life-changing opportunity.

My focus for the conference: discover schools to partner with.

After my presentation, people running education systems and schools found me eager to bring Aceflow’s AI learning tools for their schools. The people I met were amazing.

I’m super excited to start working alongside partners to pilot Aceflow with thousands of students at their schools in the following months. From sketching ideas in my notebook to actually going to market, we’re just getting started.

Presenting at GITEX Global taught me true authenticity

Be casual. My mentor

Navid Nathoo

from TKS who made this trip possible completely changed how I think about presentations. 5 minutes before my talk, he pulled me to the side and asked me why I was wearing a blazer. I took off my blazer, and he rolled up the sleeves of my shirt.

Those 5 minutes changed my whole 15-minute presentation. I had so much fun demoing the products, laying out the mission, and answering the crowd’s questions.

This life changing trip wouldn’t have been possible without TKS.

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Showcasing Aceflow at Western AI’s AInnovation event (a Western University club)

Having fun demoing our newest learning tool to a Western University Computer Science student! Got asked awesome questions.

Who let a high schooler into a university club?

I met Sophia Ma (Co-President of Western AI) at a hackathon a few months ago, where she mentored me through product design.

But this wasn’t just any hackathon.

What a lot of people don’t know, is that this was the hackathon where I coded the first version of Aceflow. Just a simple tool that let students chat with their textbooks.

Sophia and I kept in touch, and a few months later she invited me to showcase our work at her club’s AI event.

Demoing Aceflow taught me the power of passion, the mindset of always being eager for feedback, and how to make a crowd curious about your product:

• True passion stands out in a fake world. Especially at these kinds of events, where many of the people showcasing tend to sound like they want to sell you on something.

• Optimize for feedback in a crowd of smart people. When showcasing at an event with smart people (like university engineering students here), optimizing for transformative feedback is ideal. Not only do you immerse the crowd into your startup, but since the crowd’s comprised of talented people, the product feedback they give is valuable. I got great insights on things I didn’t know I didn’t know.

• Make the crowd pitch for you. It was so fun having people use our products themselves instead of me just standing and pitching. When new people came to my booth, I didn’t explain the product to them. Instead, I gave them my laptop, and had them use the product themselves. People loved this approach.

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Thanks for tuning in!

My goals for this week:

• Launch focus group to test Aceflow and iterate fast

• Make it easier for schools to partner with us (adding a subpage to our website)

• Research further into how learning science can be used in education tools—will likely write a review paper related to this topic