In this interview, Kadri Tuisk explains how her ed‑tech company pivoted during the COVID‑19 pandemic by reallocating investment funds to develop a new student‑centric platform, ClanBeat, while rebranding its existing teacher‑focused community into the Virtual Teachers Lounge. She emphasizes a co‑creation development model that involves teachers, school leaders, educational psychologists, and students directly in design and wireframing, arguing that this agile approach solves real‑world pain points. Tuisk stresses the importance of a strong, vision‑driven north star—personalised learning—to guide product decisions. On a personal level, she shares how journaling and the "morning pages" practice help founders maintain clarity, reflect on impact, and continuously improve. She advocates extending reflective habits to students to foster self‑management, intrinsic motivation, and a self‑driven learning culture. Throughout, she links these strategies to navigating uncertainty in both business and personal life.
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And for those, can you share a little bit about how you've allocated those funds that you've raised so far? Where have you seen the best return for the growth of where you are today?
Yes, now when COVID started, then we saw a really big opportunity on our current platform, which we have been having for a few years already, which is teacher-focused. And this is a growth platform for teachers and school staff where they can actually have meaningful one-on-ones, share their highs and lows, and have this community of collaboration together. And during the COVID time, this came— we rebranded it into the Virtual Teachers Lounge and started spreading the word around that. And most of our efforts went into spreading that. But at the same time, where we— when we were working together with teachers and school staff, we were on the side building a new product which is totally student-centric. So we started building the new product. And right now we have the first customers being onboarded. So we have allocated much of the funds from this investment into building the new product and right now scaling it.
Very cool. Very cool. So one thing you mentioned is how you've purposely designed your life and company through COVID. with a lot of changes going around in this world, can you talk about how you suggest maybe other founders to create and adjust their, both their life and business during times when there's so much uncertainty going on?
Oh yes. First, maybe we can touch the topic of how to design your company on the times of uncertainty, and then maybe go into more personal level. And I think this is a really cool experiment to really dive into because the product which I mentioned earlier that we have been building during COVID and from the investment we raised earlier, then this we have been building totally in co-creation model, meaning that we've been doing co-creation together with schools, with school leaders, we have educational psychology scientists co-creating this product together with us, and what's most important, students of our target markets. So we have had like literally students in our office or in the Zoom calls bringing out what are their pains. We have been designing the product together with them. They have been drawing wireframes, what would they like to see, and so my development team has been like making it into reality. And I think this is the most agile way how to react to things which are happening around you, which you might not understand completely. So those people who are actually in this turbulence, they feel the pain the most. So it's much more reasonable to bring them into your— Development process as well and doing it together with them. So you're solving actual problems. This is something really interesting to build something in co-creation. But if you're building something in co-creation, then you have to have really strong vision. And our vision is personalized learning, how the learning can adjust according to each individual's needs. So if you have this North Star, then the ways how to get there together with your users, I think this is a really fascinating journey how to build on. And if we are going into designing your life and how to really understand how you as a founder can live through this period of time at hand, then I've been a really big fan of journaling and really finding out those things which are affecting me and reflecting meaningfully, and this is also something I really want to bring into schools and student level as well, so there would be more agency around students, so they would be able to take meaningful actions in their life, and if we are talking about the cycle of constant improvement, then this is like planning, acting, and reflecting, so you cannot just mindlessly do those things and And for me, designing the processes around, uh, through meaningful reflection has been a center point of, uh, how, how I do things and how I adjust myself according to what works for me and what doesn't and what brings impact. So I really think always about the impact as well.
I love it. Love it. Yeah. So I've been actually journaling since I think almost 5 or 6 years now consistently. I think that's one of the vices in the morning that I actually stick to. Something I switched to in the last few months has been morning pages. I don't know if you've heard about that, but I highly suggest you check that out, especially in our audience. So it's basically where you're writing 3 full pages every single day and you write it without judgment, thinking that, you know, you're going to burn this page at the end of the day. So you just get everything out of your mind and it just brings so much clarity in a lot of things in your life.
So very cool. Oh, it does.
Yeah. I'd love to see kids doing that early on.
Yeah. Yeah, it's lovely that you brought it out because we have this monkey mind which like is affecting us doing those things which are really important. And if you get those things out from your mind in the morning, then you're much more productive and have much more focus. And if we are talking about kids, then maybe if you remember from your own school times, then we used to go through the school system like being told what we are told to do and following everybody else's rules and adjusting to everybody else's wants and doing those things which are measured like grades, which actually don't matter so much, and not building things up from internal motivation but from the expectations from society, parents, school. And if there would be more self-driven people in the world with a strong self-management skills, imagine the potential we could all have. So I think this is a really, really nice thing to implement in schools as well.
I'd love a world like that where everybody's all self-driven and motivated. So speaking about the North Star, which you mentioned, so I feel edtech specifically is an underserved topic in general, but also on our podcast. And it's a branch I think our audience would be interested in learning more about and are interested in exploring and learning. So for those in our audience who don't know ClanBeat, Can you tell us just a little bit more how it started and what is the problem you're really looking to solve with building it?
Yes, we are solving 2 major problems and challenges in education right now. This is student growth and well-being. And by growth, we mean student autonomy and agency of taking active role in their learning so they wouldn't be passive in receiving their education and learning. They would be actually building it up based on their internal motivation and where they want to go in life. And well-being is that we don't want to look learning in isolation, like this is something you do from 8 to 3 o'clock and then go home and then be a human and with your own hobbies and wants and dreams about the future. So our vision is that to look human as a whole, not just learning machine. And if we're talking about students, then to integrate this kind of holistic view into the students' lives, so they would also learn where to put those pieces they are learning in the school. So they must have like their North Stars as well, and they would have to have those skills how to identify those and how to design your learning journey according to those North Stars and And even if you don't have those North Stars, how to make baby steps towards reaching those goals. And it is in our passion to really help students in self-discovery, help them in setting their goals, meaningful goals for them, and along with setting their meaningful life goals, also adjust their learning goals into that journey. So for students, it looks like eDiary or everything where they're marking down their homework and their future dreams. But we have implemented the constant improvement cycle where they are doing their planning, acting together with the classmates or project groupmates or alone. And then the most important part is reflecting like how those things are affecting you. Is it hard for you? Is it easy? And if we are talking about personalized learning, then 80% of the learning has to be in like your comfort zone where you feel that, oh, I'm good at this and I'm achieving things. And 20% has to be like outside of your comfort zone where you're like feeling like I'm struggling, I suck at this. And this is where the growth actually happens. And for every individual, this 80/20 balance is different. So if we are thinking of how to really design a well-functioning education system, then— how personalized learning should be done, then finding out what is this 80/20 for each individual and how to really design learning according to that. It has to start from really understanding like each individual and yourself. And we give a lot of insights into this personalized learning planning and also supporting students in their journey. And we are totally student-centric, student-focused. So this is a tool for them, but we also give data insights to homeroom teachers and school levels, so how they could support the growth and well-being of those students and really be like this kind of partner, not somebody who is like a big brother or supervising, but somebody who is really supporting them and trying to lift them to the new heights.
