Startup Stories: Featuring C3D

Welcome to another episode of #StartupStories!

This week we are excited to be featuring Tomoko Okochi, CEO and Co-Founder of Codeca Educational Technology and Services. 

Their product, C3D.io, is an online VR coding platform that provides an innovative teaching tool that is easy to use for students by bringing visual code blocks into life and makes coding education fun and engaging.

With C3D.io, children can learn to code building a Virtual Reality world while teachers without computer science background can teach coding in a fun and engaging environment. Coding education has never been easier!

We first met Tomoko in the summer of 2018 as a student at Langara (where Paul Brassard was an instructor while Melanie Ewan was guest lecturing), then as a pitch night attendee. It wasn’t until November 2018, however, that Tomoko decided to step up on stage and present her company at Women’s Pitch Night Vancouver, where she wowed the crowd and earned second place.

After this, Tomoko continued to hone her skills, and went on to win Volition Pitch Night Vancouver in February 2019, as well as Volition Women’s Pitch Night Seattle this past July. It was a no brainer for us to invite Tomoko to present her “then and now” pitch at our Anniversary Party in July, and we are so excited to share her journey with you today.

Hello Tomoko! So, to start, can you share what that first pitch experience was like?

If I don’t count some presentations I did as a student, my first pitch experience was with Volition last November. I had to deliver a 90-second pitch and I was pretty nervous. I had been practicing so much that I had everything memorized. I wanted to face the audience and not look at the slides while pitching, but when I started my pitch and I clicked to go through the slides I didn’t realize I was still pressing the button and the slides went directly to the last one. 

I had no idea what was happening. A friend of mine recorded me and only later I realized I did the entire pitch with the team slide behind me.

At that first pitch I got second place. After that, I did another pitch with Volition to get ready to pitch for investors and from that second time I didn’t get nervous anymore. My first time was like an initiation. I’m glad it didn’t go well the first time, because I learned from that experience. Now I’m calm and I take my time to check the slides. 

The second time I pitched I felt like I was in control and I got first place!  After that, I felt I was ready to really go pitch investors and it’s been great! Volition gave me the opportunity to practice so I didn’t have to learn the hard lessons when pitching to investors. 

What are some company highlights and wins you’d like to share?

We made it to the TOP 25 of New Ventures BC Competition this year, although we were still pre-revenue, pre-raise, and pre-launch!

This year we worked on our product, C3D.io, and we have a beta version ready that has been already used in schools. Now we are almost ready to launch V1, we are just finalizing terms of use with the lawyer. We will be launching this month hopefully.

At this moment, we have a couple of pilot programs planned with local schools and our program has been used already in schools in the Metro Vancouver area.

There is a private school that really likes our product, C3D.io, and is interested in purchasing V1 once it’s launched. Also, we are in conversation with an extra-curricula program franchiser for licensing C3D.io to be included in their package.

That’s fantastic! What are your next steps from here?

Our main focus now is to sell to schools. The target is not the upcoming school year but the next one, 20/21. We realized the school sales cycle is really slow. When you connect with schools and teachers, they decide the budget in winter to make purchases in spring. 

This fall we are attending an education and technology conference and we are doing some professional development sessions to get in front of teachers so that we can continue the conversation and hopefully make sales.  

And throughout this journey, what has been your greatest challenge as an entrepreneur?

Since in our team we all come from a development background, we had to overcome the lack of business and financial knowledge, but we really enjoyed the learning process!

I learned about that missing knowledge by going through the New Ventures BC Competition, because to apply you have to submit a very detailed document covering a very specific list of topics, so I had to learn about business and finance along the way. Also, through the Competition I had access to mentors who helped me with that. 

I also joined the Launch Academy incubator and they have lots of mentors as well. I signed up for every opportunity to learn about business, finance, marketing, and sales.

So what is one piece of advice you would give to someone just beginning their startup journey?

Build a team with expertise in various areas!

Having a team is very important when you start a business. We incorporated with only two people and we are both very technical, basically we are two CTOs. But after applying to the New Ventures BC Competition, I realized I should have incorporated with people with different backgrounds. 

All the mentors I met told me that you need to incorporate with CMOs, CFOs, COOs, because at the beginning you don’t have any revenue and, unless you have been funded, you can’t pay your employees. 

If you have them on your team as co-founders, they have reasons to commit because they have their shares. My advice is to find the right people from different backgrounds who can commit to the growth of your company and believe in what the company does.

On that note, as you may know, we define Volition as ‘the will to do what you want and to get it done’. What is your volition?

My volition is to make coding accessible to everyone.

I think coding is a skill that can be applied to many different types of jobs. It is not just about typing the code, but it’s about thinking about a problem logically and applying your problem-solving skills. 

So even if you don’t pursue a career as a programmer, knowing how to code can help you in other areas because in any kind of job you need to be able to break down the problem so that you can start tackling it more easily.  

Also, my passion comes from wanting to help more girls get into the tech industry, being a female programmer myself I see a big gender gap in the industry. When I go to schools to teach coding it seems to me some girls just back away from the beginning because they think coding is not their thing. We need to change that.

And now for another one of our regular questions–what is your ask here today?

Introductions to schools, after school education franchises, and parents.

Is there anything else that you would like to share before we sign off? 

I think Volition is doing a great job giving the opportunity to entrepreneurs to practice their pitch and network with people in the industry. This is how you get to learn from other people and maybe you even end up finding your co-founders at one of their events!

I‘m really thankful to have had the opportunity to pitch at Volition Pitch Nights because that really changed the course of my pitching career. I never thought I would be so comfortable pitching.

I definitely recommend the pitch nights to every entrepreneur!

How can people best connect with you?

Website: www.c3d.io

Social media:
twitter.com/codec3d
facebook.com/c3dio
instagram.com/c3d.io
linkedin.com/company/codeca-education