Taking and sharing university notes in different formats was the problem that the Kami founders Hengjie Wang, Jordan Thoms, Alliv Samson, and Bob Drummnd set out to solve in 2013. Kami is now the world’s number one digital classroom tool creating flexible learning environments with real-time collaboration, and also integrates with Google Classroom, Schoology and Canvas.
Chintaka Ranatunga was the original seed investor alongside San Francisco based ex Google executive David Russel who remains on the Board. They later helped bring in Flying Kiwi Angels, then SCIF and Right Click Capital, and Kami now has investment from a range of New Zealand, Australian investors, and Silicon Valley investors .
Today Kami has 25 million users in 180 countries, and CEO Hengjie Wang says it has been a wild ride.
“We didn’t have any experience in the education sector, but we wanted to help in the transformation to digital classrooms. We have always listened to our users and customers, taking a naive approach, asking lots of questions, and understanding what they want to achieve.”
Hengjie says that of the 1.5 billion students affected by COVID19 around the world, Kami is now helping and supporting 25 million of them.
“A good thing that has come out of the pandemic is that students can do classroom or learning at any time of the day. With digital tools they have learnt to unbind themselves from a teacher/classroom situation.”
Chintaka says that while COVID19 caused a huge uplift in growth for Kami, the reason the company has been so successful is that the founders and investors have been customer obsessed, ambitious and globally focussed from the beginning. This is alongside having the perseverance to keep going in tough times to get to significant scale.
“We’re constantly questioning: how can Kami be bigger and have more impact? We’re challenging ourselves to increase the growth given the size of the market. Startups used to focus on New Zealand customers first then global later, but now startups need to think global first.”
Hengjie says he’s loving it. “I could do this for decades, it’s a huge passion to improve our student learning. We’re actively looking for more people to join Kami, to help us take it to the next level and grow to 100 million users. Anyone who wants to be part of that journey should get in touch!”