The feedbackr app

Christian Haintz and Karin Pichler have founded a start-up based on their master's theses. They talk about their experiences, successes and everything they've learned as founders. When we developed the first prototype of our app, we had no idea that one day it would lead to a company. In 2011 TU Graz was looking for a tool which could make mass interactions possible in the lecture room. Our supervisor and mentor, Martin Ebner, who leads the TU Graz Educational Technology Unit , was at the time looking at the effects of interposed questions on learning results. This basic idea is founded on the ancient Greek teaching method of Socrates, in which the content is discussed to make it understandable to students over time. Since smart phones had just become universally popular, we decided together to bridge the hardware and ask the question: could we develop an application which every student could run on their own mobile? And our assumption was: yes we can! Accordingly, Karin began work on the first prototype of what today is feedbackr , while Christian developed a kind of orientation ticker for lectures. After we had done our master's theses, we noticed that there was a need for such a product, not only in the teaching sector, but beyond. So we decided to continue to develop our mobile app and to offer it in a larger radius. The step to self-employment was never up for discussion. We knew we could still look for jobs if our enterprise should fail. And anyway, how high are your living standards just after you've finished university?