Natalia Simonenko is the founder and CEO of Oyster, a new educational kit for children. Simonenko says that Oyster's mission is to help children find their mission in life. The name comes from a reference in Shakespeare's play “The Merry Wives of Windsor”
In 2004 my partner and I founded our first software company, Movavi. We created software for video and audio processing. Now, almost 20 years later, it’s a global software development company with an international team and a portfolio of 30 products in 20 languages. During those years, I gained extensive experience in identifying, building, managing, and scaling high-growth business opportunities, and found that I had a particular talent for leading and motivating teams.
Outside Movavi, my business interests include the future of jobs, 21st century skills & knowledge, and STEAM (science, technology, art, engineering, math) education for children & teens. Which led to my latest venture, Oyster.
Oyster brings together all three of these areas of interest. The name comes from a reference in Shakespeare's play “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, published in 1602. In Act II, a character named Falstaff says: “I will not lend thee a penny,” to which Pistol replied: “Why, then, the world's mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.” I believe that, with the help of our Oyster kits, children around the world will be able to find their dream career, so that the whole world will open up for them.
How Oyster came into being
"Our mission is to help children all over the world find their mission in life" - Oyster founder Natalia Simonenko
The idea of creating Oyster comes from a family tradition. When my son was three years old, in order to support the development of his speech and other skills, I came up with a game: Every so often, I gave him an envelope containing a letter from one of his favorite superheroes. The letter asked that the recipient complete certain tasks - tasks that worked to develop mind, body, and spirit. My son was happy to complete his missions; he sent his answers to his superheroes (via his mom) and delighted in his achievements. Over a period of two years, he completed 33 missions and learned to read and count effortlessly while playing.
In 2017, I came up with the idea of transforming and scaling this game to create educational kits with experiments for children, replacing the superheroes with representatives of various professions. After all, every child dreams of becoming something special when they grow up - a doctor, an artist, an astronaut - the sky’s the limit! And I thought: what if the child does not just dream, but also “tries on” different professions - and perhaps even chooses a favorite to aim for in real life? Each Oyster kit contains a new profession, a new world, and new activities. Who knows? By the time the child is ready to start specializing in high school, they may already know what they want to do and select courses appropriately.
With a small team, we created a prototype — an archaeologist's kit. We tested it with focus groups and launched the first kits in the spring of 2018. At first, we sold individual kits over the internet but, in 2019, we decided to launch this project using a subscription model in the US. Before the launch, we did a small test to check our assumptions, and the audience's engagement and interest in our products exceeded all expectations. As a result, we launched three lines of kits - for different age groups - based on the subscription model.
The first line was designed for children 5-8 years old. In 2020, we added two new age ranges: for 3-5 year olds and for 8-12 year olds (the latter included programming skills development). In 2021, Oyster received a Mod's Choice Award (MCA) for innovative products and services created for children, families, and educators.
Oyster product line
The main goal of Oyster products is to introduce children to the world of real professions and develop soft and hard skills through targeted play. The kits are designed for children 3-12 years old and their families. By creating different products for different age ranges, we enable families with siblings of different ages to come together in the Oyster world. A child starting with the first kits can develop their own personal Oyster world from age three to age 12.
Subscribers receive a new box of tasks every month focused around a new profession. Every month is a new opportunity to study the world and human activity through a different professional lens - game designer, animator, environmental engineer, and more. We now have 40 different kits on the market.
Activities and tasks are thematically related to the profession, opening up a new field of knowledge and using age-appropriate skills and abilities. Each box combines educational STEAM concepts with DIY content in the form of kits, costumes, and other game elements adapted for self-assembly by children, with or without adult supervision.
We have also tried to include VR and AR technologies in our kits. The main idea was that, with the help of AR, a child can engage much more closely with the content - for example, see 3D models of internal organs in the doctor kit. In some sets, we provide VR glasses, which also expand the child's experience. After testing these technologies with children and parents, we found that the use of VR/AR technologies has a positive effect on users, but did not change the level of sales.
We also actively use video instructions to assist children working with our kits, because some experiments may be complex for a child to perform independently. The video content very clearly demonstrates to children of any age what they can do with the set without involving adults.
Oyster's plans for the future
After the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020, competition for learning-at-home materials became much more fierce, and it became difficult for us to sell through our regular social networks channels, so we refocused our efforts on the B2B market. Since our product is unique and unlike other products on the market, we began to sell kits into schools, interest clubs, children's camps, and other group settings. Because it was difficult and expensive to work with both the B2B and B2C markets - in addition to different sales channels, each market needs its product - we have completely switched to the B2B market.
My recommendations to those who want to turn a hobby into a business
When a business is born out of what you love, you are ready to give all your free time to the project and you don’t let difficulties get in your way, because this is a very personal project. However, creating a business from a hobby also has its disadvantages - for example, it’s hard to be critical of your own ideas. It can be challenging to make difficult business decisions and assess business prospects with a detached mind. Your goal should be to combine the passion of personal involvement in the project with the discipline of business thinking
Often, the biggest obstacle on the way to a happy creative life is fear — it prevents us from going where our hearts want to go. You can’t build a successful business from scratch if you don’t commit to making it happen, come what may. You will be successful if you are not afraid to let go of past mistakes and guaranteed outcomes and radically change your life. When you have passion and self-confidence, you are ready to start analyzing - and realizing - your professional desire.
