This is what happens when three students lock themselves away for a creative workshop in a remote student residence deep in the woods near Eberswalde: the first concept for the start-up visionYOU. The three founders - Madeleine Wolf, Teresa Kreis and Paul Lorenz - are now continuing to tinker away at their educational company in the MediaTechLab. Their goal: each school should receive the tools and support to put media education into practice in an effective way for every pupil. In an interview conducted on the green sofa of the MediaTechLab Lounge at Studio Five, we spoke with them about Die Sendung mit der Maus, education in Germany and how the glass in their office with the little slips of paper make them persevere.
As the visionYOU founding members, we are…
Geeks and pioneers in digital education.
visionYOU is…
The creative agency for digital education. We create modern and multimedia education concepts for schools, educational institutions and companies – inter alia, in the fields of media competence, entrepreneurship, coding, vocational orientation and finding young employees. We support teachers for the digital transformation in education. We provide them with ready-to-use teaching concepts and advanced training in the form of e-learning. With our visionTour, young people experience a multimedia vocational orientation and can find internships and training places more easily. As we are reaching young people in their own language, we can also help companies to get to know potential trainees personally at an early stage. We also produce our own film formats for this purpose - for ourselves and our affiliates.
Our business idea came about…
Because, as digital natives, we could no longer stand watching how sluggish digital education was advancing in a country with as much potential as Germany. That’s why we locked ourselves in a remote student hostel deep in the woods near Eberswalde for a creative workshop back in 2016 and then re-emerged with our first idea after four days, which we then refined during the work on our master’s thesis and put into practice during our EXIST start-up scholarship.
We had our first VR experience…
Paul’s first encounter was at some point in the 90s in a cyberspace café near Berlin Zoo station with Forte VFX1 headgear. He would probably be a game developer now if the technology had established itself back then. What a stroke of luck for us…
Best digital media education product ever (except for visionYOU)…
Die Sendung mit der Maus! It was and is a doozie, but, for schools, it’s definitely the tablet these days. Tablets offer infinite possibilities, especially if they are used to complement classical teaching and e-learning. And best of all, they can be used anywhere these days. Unfortunately, they are often used just as “display devices” instead of being used for the various possibilities of interaction with the users. So, we have made it our mission to develop the right teaching concepts – on a interdisciplinary basis – for using digital media in schools and beyond, and to provide them to the teachers.
Our current product in August for coming and joining in and trying out…
Our visionTour. This is a multimedia project week on vocational orientation for school classes. Young people experience virtual impulses, see real adventures in companies and reflect on what they have learnt through peer education.
The start-up team of two women and one man got to know each other…
…and have been going through thick and thin ever since.
For us, Potsdam is…
The place to be!
In 2021, visionYOU will be…
Continuing unabatedly to make education in Germany sustainable, barrier and cliché-free, and, above all, creative and sustainable.
Your vision, and the countries/markets where it is represented…
In German-speaking countries by 2020. From 2021 onwards, we want to have a presence at every place within the Kuiper Belt in the education market .
We have experience as…
a dishwasher, meat counter sales assistant, fashion designer, recruiter, coffee expert, web designer, innovation driver, waiter, entrepreneurs, marathon runner, best men, employer, dog lover, marketeer, supporting actor, e-athlete, ballet dancer…
We offer…
Passion, endurance, stamina, courage and humour.
We finance ourselves / are backed…
Through equity, grants, and, hopefully, via a bank loan as well as our job contracts.
Our favourite location for networking in Babelsberg is…
The beers after work with the affiliates at the Babelsberg film studios.
We recommend every startup…
Find a way for you personally to deal with failure. We have placed a glass in our office and regularly throw little notes into it recording our successes, both the little ones and the big ones. When things don’t go as well as we would like them to, the successes we’ve achieved together are then a constant reminder.
That is still important for us…
Always have a towel with you. You never know…
You can find us at…
August-Bebel-Str. 26-53, at Studio Five, 3rd floor, fourth door, on the left and here
The small print…
visionYOU GmbH was founded in Potsdam in October 2017. We have been supported by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy’s EXIST start-up scholarship since May 2017 and received the “New Perspectives Special Award ” at the 2017 Startgreen Awards in November 2017.
We found the first affiliates during our EXIT phase and successfully piloted our concepts like the visionTour with the first schools in the region. We make the digital education of tomorrow a reality today. So, don’t hesitate, get in touch!
About MTH Blog
The media technologies of the future are already being used today – not only in the entertainment sector, but also in a wide variety of industries. Christine Lentz meets up with tech enthusiasts, established companies and researchers for our monthly MediaTech Hub Potsdam blog to tell the stories behind the innovative business models.