This is what happens when three students lock themselves away in a remote student residence deep in the forest in Eberswalde for a creative workshop: The first concept for the startup visionYOU. Today, the three founders Madeleine Wolf, Teresa Kreis and Paul Lorenz continue to tinker with their educational company in the MediaTech Lab. The aim is to provide every school with the tools and support to effectively implement media education for all pupils . In an interview on the green sofa of the MediaTech Lab Lounge at Studio Five, we talk to them about the show with the mouse, education in Germany and how the jar with the little pieces of paper in their office provides courage.
We visionYOU founding team are …
Geeks and pioneers in digital education.
visionYOU is …
The creative agency for digital education. We create modern and multimedia educational concepts for schools, educational institutions and companies – including in the areas of media skills, entrepreneurship, coding, career guidance and securing young talent. We support teachers in the digital transformation of education. To this end, we provide them with ready-to-use teaching concepts and training courses in the form of e-learning. With our visionTour, young people experience multimedia career guidance and can find internships and apprenticeships more easily. Because we reach young people in their own language, we 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 us and our partner companies.
Our company idea was born …
Because, as digital natives, we could no longer stand by and watch how slowly digital education was progressing in a country with as much potential as Germany. So in 2016, we locked ourselves away for a creative workshop in a remote student dormitory deep in the forest in Eberswalde and came out after four days with our first idea, which we then honed during our Master’s thesis and implemented during our EXIST start-up grant.
We had our first VR experience…
Paul back in the nineties in a cyberspace café near Berlin Zoo station with a Forte VFX1 headgear. If the technology had caught on back then, he would probably be a game developer today. How lucky for us…
Best digital media education product ever (except visionYOU) …
The show with the mouse! It was and still is a hit, but for schools today it’s definitely the tablet. Tablets offer endless possibilities, especially if they are used to supplement traditional lessons and for e-learning courses. And the best thing is that they could be used anywhere today. Unfortunately, today they are often only used as “display devices” instead of being used for the many possibilities of interaction with users. We have therefore made it our mission to develop the right teaching concepts – across all subjects – for the use of digital media in schools and beyond and to provide teachers with the tools they need.
Our current product in August to join in and try out…
Our visionTour. This is a multimedia career guidance project week for school classes. Young people experience virtual impulses, experience real adventures in companies and reflect on what they have learned through peer education.
We two female founders and one male founder got to know each other …
…and have been going through thick and thin ever since.
Potsdam is for us …
The place to be!
In 2021 visionYOU is …
Unstoppable on the way to making education in Germany sustainable, barrier- and cliché-free and, above all, creative and future-proof.
Your vision, in which countries/markets…
Until 2020 in German-speaking countries. From 2021, we want to be represented everywhere within the Kuiper Belt in the education market.
We have experience as …
Dishwasher, meat saleswoman, fashion designer, recruiter, coffee expert, web designer, innovation driver, waiter, entrepreneur, marathon runner, best man, employer, dog lover, marketer, supporting actor, e-athlete, ballet dancer…
We bring with us …
Passion, endurance, stamina, courage and humor.
We finance ourselves / are funded …
Through equity, subsidies, hopefully soon also a bank loan and our orders.
Our favorite location for networking in Babelsberg is …
The celebration band beers with the partner companies at Filmstudio Babelsberg.
We recommend every startup …
Find your own personal way of dealing with failure. We have put a jar in our office in which we regularly throw small pieces of paper on which we note our successes, both big and small. If things don’t go as well as we’d like, the successes we’ve achieved together remind us of them.
This is still important to us …
Always have a towel with you. You never know…
You can find us …
August-Bebel-Str. 26-53, in Studio Five, 3rd floor, fourth door, left and here
The small print …
visionYOU GmbH was founded in Potsdam in October 2017. Since May 2017, we have been supported by the EXIST start-up grant from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and received the “Special Prize for New Perspectives” at the Startgreen Award 2017 in November 2017.
As part of our EXIST phase, we were able to find our first partner companies and successfully pilot our concepts, such as the visionTour, with the first schools in the region. We are making the digital education of tomorrow tangible today. So don’t hesitate, get in touch with us!
More about the MTH Blog
The media technologies of the future are already being used today – not only in the entertainment sector but in a wide variety of industries. For our MediaTech Hub Potsdam blog, we talk to tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and researchers once a month and tell the stories behind their innovative business models, ideas, projects and collaborations.
