Hikre School

A fully online 21st-century learning platform that teaches Filipino students world-class tech skills like UI/UX design, app development, and entrepreneurship.

World-class education shouldn't be reserved for high-class families or it shouldn't cost hundreds of thousands of Philippine pesos by taking out loans. Additionally, it should available in every part of the planet, even with just a laptop at your home.

At Hikre School, we aim to equip underserved Filipino students with 21st-century skills through our unique online design, coding, and entrepreneurship training program without payment upfront and by providing the right mentorship support and job placement.

We do this by immersing our students in 12-week cohort-based program giving them opportunities to network with people from Apple, Microsoft, work and collaborate on projects and meet your community.

At scale, our solution could help the Philippines become the next land of opportunity so Filipinos don't have to leave the country to find a better living.

Super expensive education that guarantees no career or job opportunities and world-class education that isn't accessible to most Filipino communities. 

Other than that, the majority of Filipinos lack the proper training to prepare themselves for the future. First with soft skills like collaboration, visionary leadership, creativity, communication, and storytelling. Then with hard skills, like design and coding.

The current educational system is pushing away a big number of students because of this. Around 7 to 12 million high school and college students are affected by this problem.

We're serving college students and freelancers (18-27) looking to reinvent their careers and to improve their skill set, so they will be ready to grab opportunities locally and globally. In terms of jobs, entrepreneurship, and more. 

The current state of college and universities are not providing enough outcomes while paying hundreds of thousands of Philippine pesos. Learning is not personalized, not student-centric, not outcome-based, and not designed for collaboration. 

To understand their needs we engage in communities in Reddit and Facebook.

What we're doing is that we're creating a cohort-based and community-driven platform that helps these students and freelancers learn highly valuable 21st-century skills in a span of 12 weeks.

Live sessions, highly collaborative, and 1:1 mentorship to accelerate the learning. By doing this, we ensure that students with the right community, mindset, skillset, and tools, they will be prepared for the future without having to spend a lot of money. Additionally, they can do it directly from home.

We help underserved and low-class Filipino students prepare for the future by giving them access to world-class skills like design, coding, and entrepreneurship. 

To ensure that it also works effectively, we incorporate soft skill and extracurricular training that will strengthen their ability to learn, engage, and succeed outside the program.

Derick David, CEO & President

Email: derick@hikre.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/de...

Our solution is accelerated and highly collaborative learning that helps students learn practical skills they can apply in the real world just after a few weeks or a month. 

We focus on soft skills as much as we do on hard skills. 

Yes, we run a cohort of 10 students for 12 weeks. 

As a result, they've won 2 hackathons resulting in more than 2 million PHP in incubation support. Some students have changed careers and now secured design and business internships abroad. 

1. Slack - Community

2. Zoom - Live sessions

3. Lyon - Recorded lessons

4. Wix - Landing page

5. CrowdParty - Virtual games for fun

By providing the proper training program and world-class education that caters to the needs of Filipinos in terms of job readiness, entrepreneurial know-how, or career opportunities in general, the country's economic and technological aspects will drastically grow. This provides more opportunities for foreigners to do business in the Philippines and it attracts new game-changing innovations that will be created by Filipinos themselves. Eventually creating the next-generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, and problem-solvers.

1. No. Student applications

2. No. Social media leads through responses

3. No. of workshop and event participants

Next year: Add 1-hour indvidiual extracurricular workshops, expand training program to non-Apple users, and launch and organize Hackathon events

Next 3 years: Run multiple concurrent batches with programs varying from design, coding, and entrepreneurship. Partners with Apple to give students Macbooks

Next 5 years: Build education and entrepreneurial hub in the Philippines that is nature-based and solar powered. it will contain laboratories, restaurants, classrooms, auditorium, dormitories for students, businesses, and startups.

Market size: Launch services that caters to more low-income people and provide flexible payment plans

Financing: Be able to get into an SE Asian accelerator, raised seed and Series A funding from investors that understand the EdTech market

We started Hikre School so that we can make education more accessible and affordable to developing nations so that they don't have to leave their countries.  

3 people work on our team 1 full-time, 2 part-time

We're composed of 1 Filipino, 1 Indian, and 1 American. Two computer science majors and 1 marketing and entrepreneurship major. 

Total 8 years combined experience in software development, engineering, and UI/UX design with 1 being a Chief Design of a Stanford-based startup.

1 Apple Developer Academy alumni, the school for app developers, designers, and entrepreneurs backed by Apple. 

We've met together in college in the United States due to our common interests and we absolutely work well together and we go through thick and thin.

One thing that drives us is the vision of the future of education and we're natural-born entrepreneurs who care about making a difference than making money.

We've designed a carpooling app back before the pandemic that is like the Uber of long-distance travel.

We brainstormed in our apartments, designed and coded a prototype on my iPhone, and pitched it in front of a large audience.

We won the pitch competition and got invited for another bigger pitch competition.

1. Lyon - learning management system

2. UIZard - access to rapid prototyping tools

3. Philippine Technology Organization - community partner

4. CrowdParty - virtual parties and games to make learning fun

5. AngelHack - community partner

6. Outliant - remote job opportunities abroad