Mission & Vision
“Our mission is to train the next generation of builders, makers, inventors and entrepreneurs.”
We believe the best way to prepare for a world of accelerating change is to train our children with the foundational skills and mindsets to build solutions to the problems of their future.
Hank Horkoff, Co-Founder & CEO
Core Values
As part of the Steamoji family, we expect these values to be the energy you put into every communication, decision and action you take. They are our brand DNA and should be trained repeatedly and ingrained in your employees.
Exploration
Curious. Open-minded. Risk-taking.
We have a spirit of embracing change and believe that if we are going to fail, we must fail well. We are understanding, appreciative, and supportive of new ideas, as we are human and recognize the humanity in others.
Collaboration
Supportive. Respectful. Encouraging.
We make learning and growing together a safe and approachable process, creating an environment that is both competitive, and supportive. Even in gamification, we stay true to being honest, humble and fair.
Problem Solving
Understanding. Creating. Innovating.
We understand that there are many different ways to overcome a problem, and look at the bigger picture from all angles. We are tenacious and industrious, and never lose sight of the goal we have set out to accomplish.
A Growth Mindset
Confident. Building. Improving.
We are lifelong learners that value growing from our mistakes. We are agile and anticipate the need to constantly iterate and improve our solutions, while seeking feedback from others in order to gain greater perspective.
The Steamoji™ Brand
Core Problem, Steamoji Solution
The idea for Steamoji was instigated when our CEO Hank took his oldest son to a maker camp and he got excited about a project. He wasn’t trying his hardest at school out of a fear of getting things wrong, and the maker mindset seemed like the perfect solution. The problem was there was no progression, only sampling. Hank went home and searched up ‘maker kits’ on Amazon only to be overwhelmed by the thousands of results. How was any ordinary parent supposed to make sense of the variety of learning opportunities available? Day camps at maker spaces are great to expose kids to sample projects, but there is no structured progression, only sampling. This is where Steamoji comes in.
There is a big market gap here, as maker spaces often lack the scale to invest in branding, curriculum development, backend IT and training systems, as well as automation and gamification design. While there are a growing number of parents who recognize that STEAM subjects will be critically important to their children’s future careers, schools lack trained staff and funding for these programs and so remain focused on traditional studies. Secondly, the private market is mostly based around adult maker spaces where you can go to use a wood-shop to make your own furniture or 3D printers for architectural models. There is nothing specifically for kids. The maker labs that do exist typically lack staying power as they are tied to the passion of the original founder, who has to be the main driver of projects and camps to keep customers coming back. And finally, there is a clear market trend towards vertical specialization in private, childhood education if you look at Mathnasium out of L.A, which focuses solely on math, or Code Ninjas out of Houston which has quickly become the leading coding brand for kids in North America and Europe. STEAM is next.
Steamoji is excited to be the first-to-market in this emerging category. We believe we are truly unique in our delivery of such a program and are committed to investing heavily in brand development. We have built out extensive systems and technology so that brand touch-points are fun and engaging for kids, while keeping parents on top of progress. For example, when a child leaves Steamoji, they “badge out” using a custom QR code (fun for them), which triggers an “artifact email” that goes to their parents with a video of what they did that day, list of skills acquired, and conversation starters as well as a link to book more sessions. Gamification elements for kids are tied to systems that provide value for parents.
We have also spent a lot of time and energy thinking about the culture we are trying to build here at Steamoji, and people are a critical part of the experience, from video personalities who provide curriculum instructions, to centre managers and facilitators who work together to spark inspiration in apprentices. Our physical locations are safe and engaging spaces that are designed to inspire apprentices. The Build to Solve™ mural exists in every Steamoji location and features famous builders, makers, inventors and entrepreneurs who show young minds what’s possible if they build as big as they can dream. Finally, our 400-hour curriculum is the cornerstone of our brand and what separates us from a maker kit from Amazon or a summer camp. There is nowhere else that exists where an elementary school child can spend 4-5 years completing structured, reinforcing STEAM projects that build on what they’ve already learned and challenge them to go further like at Steamoji.
There’s also nothing online that does it either. Steamoji has to be delivered at a maker academy because the focus is on hands-on maker skills, and we provide physical equipment and materials that most people simply aren’t able to have at home. Consider how Mathnasium is able to charge $350 per month while the leading math app Mathletics is only $1. Parents are willing to pay a premium when they know their child is learning in a structured environment with systems in place and a curriculum that is designed to keep them on task and where they can see progression.
We have been built from day one to franchise, as this model allows us to invest in the curriculum and branding in a way that we wouldn’t be able to do on our own. This is very common for tutoring centres, and more recently, for these vertically-focused businesses that capture an emerging market in early childhood education. The typical terms for a tutoring franchise include a $30k franchise fee, $150-200k in startup costs, which includes your leasehold improvements and working capital to begin with, and 10-15% of monthly revenues in royalties and national marketing fees.
The chart below illustrates what we mean when we mention these vertically-focused education franchise models like Mathnasium and Code Ninjas. On the bottom you have your more generic, all ages, all grades and all subjects tutoring centres such as Sylvan, Oxford, Scholars
and Kumon. On the top are your more niche, specialized education centres that focus on one thing and do it well. They tend to fall somewhere in the middle in terms of price, and recent trends in STEM education and coding have set the example for what will come next: a specialized STEAM educational franchise for kids. Steamoji is the first to market in this unique, emerging category.
Brand Guidelines
Steamoji is a place for children to create a sense of meaning, master new skills, and express themselves through creativity.
Keep this in mind as you start to talk to people about Steamoji and represent the Steamoji brand, as all of our brand elements have been designed around this concept of a makerspace.
Remember our 4 core values that make up the DNA of each Steamoji academy. These values are an integral part of the culture we have built at Steamoji and must be lived by you and your staff each day.
We have selected 5 brand colours to be used in all marketing materials and decorations at each academy. These are also great for 3D printer filament, badge lanyards, or other consumables that require a bit of colour. “Steamoji Blue” is our primary brand colour, and should be used for all presentation and email backgrounds as well as titles and headings. “Steamoji Yellow” is our secondary, or accent, colour, and contrasts nicely with the blue. It can actually be used over top of the blue to create a stand-out effect, but should never be used on top of white. Although ours is a strong yellow, smaller text will often be unreadable with yellow over white. Red, rose and orange provide a warmth to complement the blue and yellow, and are fun, kid-friendly colours that work well for shapes and other brand elements.
But first, let’s talk about our logo. Imagined by one of Steamoji’s co-founders and designed by digital consulting firm Versett, our logo is meant to simply and effectively communicate our brand in a fun and engaging way. STEAM, by now you should know, stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art (or Applied Design) and Math, and the ‘Oji’ at the end of our name is our mascot; a fun-loving whimsical character who likes to build things to solve problems.
Be sure to give the logo breathing room when using it in documents and emails. There should be a margin of clear space equivalent to the height of a lower case letter around all sides of the Steamoji logo. When using the tagline, it should top align with the top of the smile. We’ll provide you with logos both with and without the tagline, so you don’t have to worry about making sure everything is properly aligned.
You should always display our logo on a white background, or against one of our brand colours. Under no circumstances may the logo be altered. You must not alter or change the angle, colour or gradient of the primary logo in any way, as this hurts the brand and damages our brand image. The Oji logo is more flexible than our corporate logo and can be resized and altered as needed.
Steamoji has two fonts, Bungee and Avenir. Make sure to take the time to open up your font book in applications and download these two fonts from the design folder. You should use Bungee for headings and Avenir for the text in any and all documents you create for Steamoji. You do not need to use these fonts in emails.
Finally, the shape toolkit is a set of fun, lively shapes to add a bit of colour and interest to your ads and other promotional materials. You can use the shape toolkit in fill or stroke format, but the most interesting way to use them is to combine multiple shapes together, or with stock images, to create dynamic and unique shapes and graphics. As a general rule of thumb, don’t use more than 5 shapes together at once.
If you still have questions, feel free to email us at info@steamoji.com with specific examples and we’ll be happy to help you identify proper and improper use.
Local Icon
You may have also noticed that each Steamoji location uses their own unique icon, combining the brand elements of Oji, a brand colour and distinctive circular design. We will give you a few options to choose from, and then this icon is yours to use in your social accounts, for marketing, and to put on your door.
Space Design Playbook
The Space Design Playbook is a helpful guide for thinking about the design and flow of your fixed academy location. It covers: the branding approach, guiding principles, user journey and map, spatial archetypes, space requirements, floor plan, some interior views, millwork and graphics, as well as the typical construction schedule of a Steamoji academy.
Brand Language
At Steamoji we believe that language shapes thought, and so the lexicon we use to describe our brand is critical to differentiate ourselves from the competition and create a unique Steamoji culture. For example, at Steamoji we don’t have “students” and “teachers,” but “apprentices” and “facilitators.” It is important to follow this guide carefully and memorize the terms in it so that you can start to talk to people about Steamoji in a way that will be memorable and make them feel as though they are part of a community with its own language and way of describing things. That way they’ll be more likely to bring you customers when they start using these terms to describe Steamoji to their friends.
Oji Store
While your membership sales will be done through our backend payment system, we encourage you to purchase a Square POS system for incidentals like merch and printing fees. The nice thing about Square is that it is made to house iPads, and you can swivel the system around and let your customers select their items from our custom-built Steamoji Store. We suggest using this same iPad for the Steamoji Prize Station, so apprentices can redeem prizes with their Oji coins in a way that makes them feel like they are actually buying something.
Some examples of the kind of merchandise you will want to carry at your academy include pins, stickers, hats, t-shirts, hoodies and 3D pens. You may even choose to carry basic Monoprice IIIP 3D printers, which go for around $500. Prizes could be anything from your local dollar store to Lego Products ordered off Amazon.
The 400-hour Build to Solve™ Curriculum
Our Clients
We sell to families with children ages 5-18. When compared to other educational centres, Steamoji offers a focused enrichment opportunity to families looking to supplement their children’s learning. At the lower end of this range, it is important that apprentices be able to read in order to use the Steamoji Apprentice App, as well as be able to demonstrate basic fine motor skills such as holding a pen and writing their name in order to complete initial projects.
At the higher end of this range, older apprentices are encouraged to focus on projects that interest them. They come to Steamoji to access the tools and mentorship they will need to bring an idea from planning to production. Projects created by our older apprentices should inspire younger apprentices to continue learning and pursue more ambitious projects.
We have developed a number of User Personas to help you start thinking about who your prototypical Steamoji users might be. These personas were developed to expand understanding of target audiences and imagine how these representative individuals might engage with Steamoji.
Philosophy & Pedagogy
We have put a lot of time and study into our curriculum, and recruited a team of subject-matter experts to advise on some of the best STEAM projects out there. Our lead instructional designer and a number of these consultants are former science centre educators who are already immersed in the makerverse as hobbyists and enthusiasts.
Steamoji’s philosophy stems from a problem-solving mindset we expect from our franchisees, their employees, and every apprentice that enters Steamoji World. A de-facto bible for the modern maker movement, Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, is a useful guide to the student-centred constructionism that defines Steamoji’s pedagogical approach.
Instructional Approach
At Steamoji, apprentices design, make and build things to solve problems. We believe in open-ended experimentation and exposing children to new technologies which nurture their curiosity and prepare them to tackle the challenges of their future.
Missions, Projects & Skills
Steamoji’s 45 missions are broken down into 4 subject pathways: fabrication, physical computing, engineering and digital arts. The column on the left hand side of the table below shows the number of missions that need to be completed at each of our 10 achievement levels. As a level 1 “Tinkerer,” apprentices complete 1 mission, while a level 9 “Maker” must complete 9 missions in order to advance. Level 10 “Master Makers” complete a capstone project in a pathway of their choice using all of the skills they’ve learned in levels 1-9. In each pathway, the previous mission is the prerequisite for the one above it – so in physical computing, for example, apprentices must complete Intro to Computing (Vex Robotics) before moving on to Advancing with Vex Robotics.
Apprentices have some flexibility to choose which missions they would like to do, but must complete missions in all 4 pathways until they get to Master Maker. Then, they can specialize, identifying a real problem in the world and designing and building their own solution to that problem, whether that’s a robot that’s designed to perform a specific task and a unique invention that solves a problem they’re really passionate about. Apprentices are encouraged to consolidate all of their acquired Steamoji hard and soft skills through this process of designing, making, improving and marketing their final projects as builders, makers, inventors and entrepreneurs.
Steamoji University in Dashboard houses a complete project library, where you can search for projects by name or their sequence number in each mission. The first thing facilitators will do when they arrive for work is to sign into Dashboard and watch the videos for that day’s projects, as well as familiarize themselves with the support materials available so they can stay one step ahead of the apprentices and know what to expect and how to overcome challenges. Once a facilitator is familiar with a project they may only need to do a quick scan and review of the instructions in the academy app before a session, but initially will need to spend time ahead of their shift each day actively watching the videos and anticipating any fail points for apprentices. The second tab is a full list of skills, their associated pathways and categories, which is less important for your facilitators but a powerful reference tool for Academy Directors. And finally, the “Missions” tab is the best place to see an overview of each mission, including its objective, mission intro video and list of projects and their publishing status.
For a high-level overview of Steamoji hard and soft skills, the graphic below is helpful for breaking down skills by pathway and emphasizing some of the applied design thinking that is critical to creating anything of significance. This graphic is also shared with parents in our Family Guide, which exists both in print and digital form.
Curriculum Delivery Model
Our apprentice app is how we deliver our 400-hour curriculum to apprentices. Rather than group classes, Steamoji uses a video-led, facilitator-supported model that is self-guided and self-paced. Of course, there are often times where a facilitator will need to jump in to help an apprentice with the tools or technology at their workstation, but our apprentice app is designed to allow apprentices to be as independent as possible, while delivering the same content from the same subject-matter experts regardless of location or staffing needs.
The admin dashboard is a custom-built system that allows you, as the owner or academy director, to manage the day-to-day operations of your Steamoji academy. Not only is the Dashboard a powerful CRM tool for managing leads and client contact information, but it is also where you will schedule each day’s sessions and allow your staff to preview missions and projects in Steamoji University.
You will sign in to the dashboard using your email address and a one-time code, which is sent to your email on login. Once in the dashboard, you can manage and create leads and tasks under the sales tab. You will be prompted to enter all the relevant information needed to create a lead, such as their email address and phone number, relationship to the child, their child’s information, including school and birthdate, and the lead channel and source category. Once the lead is created, you have the ability to convert that lead to a member and add additional details like their address and photo.
You can also view a full list of contacts under people and export a TSV file for MailChimp or other email marketing platforms. The operations tab is where you will manage all of the apprentices at your academy, and can view their progress and create new sessions. Steamoji University is a database of all the missions, projects and skills where you and your staff will be able to review instructions for each project and the videos just as apprentices will see them on the tablets at their workstations. You can also watch and download the mission intro videos to share for marketing purposes or with prospective clients.
Finally, the academy app is meant for facilitators to be able to better support apprentices during their sessions. This is where we track attendance through the portal and manage sessions once created in the dashboard. Facilitators can also use the academy app to take artifact videos, assign points, and view instructions for projects. Other key features include a list of materials, safety instructions and project tips for facilitators, and automated emails that get sent to parents with the artifact video, summary of skills acquired, conversation starters and a link to book more sessions on badge-out.
Role of the Academy Director
As a key player, the Academy Director has the opportunity to make and control the success of the academy. Whether this person is both the owner and operator (or “In the business” model), or someone you hire to run your academy (“On the business” model), it is critical that this person has a high aptitude for business and is sales-focused, and most importantly, is comfortable networking and talking to people about Steamoji and not hiding behind a computer waiting for digital leads to come in. The responsibilities of the Academy Director include overseeing the daily operations of the academy, being an ambassador and role model for the Steamoji brand, developing and training a team of staff to deliver our 400-hour STEAM curriculum, following up with leads, conducting tours of the academy, scheduling trial sessions and helping families to register, engaging with children and their parents in the academy, scheduling parent consultations to ensure that parents understand how their child is learning and progressing through the Steamoji program, supervising a team of facilitators, ensuring the academy is a fun and safe learning environment for our apprentices, upholding corporate standards with respect to cleanliness and operational standards, being perceptive to academy dynamics and having an ability to think on the fly, as well as reporting regularly with the owners if these are separate roles.
In addition to managing and controlling the success of the academy on a day-to-day basis, the academy director must also be proactive in growing the business through a range of business development activities. These include partnerships with schools to offer the Build to Solve™ After School program as an external contractor for their co-curricular programs, partnerships with community centres or private clubs where you can also offer this program, partnerships with other kid-focused businesses for cross-promotion and collaboration on things like summer camps, local marketing initiatives, both print and digital, such as postcard drops, ad campaigns and on social media, virtual program sales across your territory for those who may not be comfortable or able to come to your physical location, community pop-ups to showcase our curriculum and technology systems, Steamoji birthday parties at your academy, and participation in as many events in your community as possible to help get the word out there. We are a referral-based business, so anything you can do to talk to people and show them what we have to offer will have a greater impact on your success than just throwing money at Facebook ad campaigns. The Academy Director must be confident and willing to explore these additional avenues.
