As it's World Book Day today, we spoke to an entrepreneurial startup that's teaching languages through storybooks.
One Third Stories writes digital bedtime tales that start in English and end in a different language, by gradually introducing foreign words.
1. When and why did you set the company up?
One Third Stories was set up by Alex Somervell and Jonny Pryn. Somervell is a "multilingual wizard" who grew up in Paraguay and has lived in the UK, Italy, Brazil and Denmark. Pryn is an educator who has always struggled with languages.
They met almost eight years ago during 6th form when Somervell moved to the UK. They started a Young Enterprise Company with 10 other friends and then started working on One Third Stories as a ‘side project’ at university before incorporating in April 2015 while Somervell finished university.
2. What particular problem do you aim to solve?
We aim to solve the broken language learning system by inspiring children in the UK, and beyond, to love languages.
The aim is to implement our methodology to stories children would read anyway, imagine Winnie the Pooh starting in English and ending in German. This way we will truly inspire the mainstream population.
3. What kind of funding do you receive?
We have received a £2,000 University of Exeter Innovation Grant, a £300 O2 Think Big grant, £30,000 pre-seed investment from the Ignite 100 Accelerator and are currently waiting to receive £10,000 Virgin start-up loan.
All these have been achieved by getting out there and putting this idea in front of the right people, and by following all the usual application routes. There is a lot out there to help small startups like ours and it's about getting out there. We don’t sit still and are always looking for new opportunities as this is an idea we are passionate about and can really transform the way children learn a second language.
We will also be launching a KickStarter campaign in April to raise some more funds so we can take our plans to the next level.
4. What kind of marketing do you do?
As we have a very limited budget, we have been focusing on as much ‘grass roots’ marketing as possible. We have held competitions in schools up and down the UK to try and engage our target market, and encourage everyone we meet to get involved!
We have been lucky enough to meet some great people and companies along the way that have believed in One Third Stories and what we are trying to achieve – from PR companies to bloggers, and journalists – and they have been helping us to get our message out to more and more people every day.
Social media also plays a big role in our marketing plans. This is a great avenue to connect and share, and we would be lost without it! It takes time, but we know that it is worth it.
We are also currently giving away known audiobooks of fairy tales such as Goldilocks and The Three Bears & The Three Little Pigs with our methodology to give a taste of our work.
5. Do you have a customer base already?
We have engaged 1,522 children in the creation of a story through a campaign to crowdsource ideas during December 2015 and January 2016.
We are currently building a community of engaged parents before releasing our first story on Kickstarter in April. We are reaching out to the education sector too to spread the word and get teachers and more schools involved.
7. Do you have a mentor and what's your team like?
We have mentors including entrepreneurs with a successful exit in publishing, linguistic professors, the branding director for one of the ‘Big 5 Publishers’ worldwide, an educational advisor for the Spanish Embassy. Besides Alex and Jonny we are working with Pied Piper Communications who are working on our blogger outreach and PR campaign.
8. Finally, as it's World Book Day, what books have inspired you?
The original inspiration for the methodology comes from ‘A Clockwork Orange’, a book on extreme violence and a dystopian future. It's the standard source of inspiration for a children’s book, as the author introduced words in a Russian dialect, Nasdat, into English contexts.
From a business perspective our reading list is very limited. However, the ‘Mom Test’ by Rob Fitzpatrick was excellent.
UKBF members have also been sharing their favourite reads in the Time Out forum. What are your thoughts around World Book Day? Login or sign up to comment!
.jpg)