The HeRo Study startup developed a SaaS platform that enables universities to manage all processes online. Over five years, the project has raised more than $3 million in investment and now serves over 100,000 students. The path was far from easy. For the first few years, the team lived “with a one-month planning horizon,” dealing with cash flow gaps while maintaining the trust of universities — ultimately achieving stable growth.
— What were you doing before HeRo Study?
— In my 23-year professional career, I launched more than 30 startups in different roles: solo founder, investor, co-founder. I worked in manufacturing, distribution, IT and marketing. Some projects closed, others had successful exits. In 2017, I was actively developing Moxie International. It was a full ecosystem: events, IT products and educational content. We started with organizing offline seminars. We brought Brian Tracy, John Shull, Michael Roach. In parallel, we created an online platform for selling courses by global business gurus and practitioners.
— How did you arrive at the idea of launching a system for universities?
— At one of the trainings, I met the vice-rector of a leading university. She asked us to estimate the cost of developing a unified university management system for their institution. Our experience in designing EdTech products helped us compile business requirements, outline pros and cons and calculate development costs — it came to around $900,000. That amount was beyond their budget. But we were inspired by the idea, built a prototype, showed it to five more universities and offered them a subscription model instead of custom development. Four universities were interested and purchased the subscription. That’s how we became a mono-product company and launched HeRo Study.
— What else distinguished your idea from existing solutions besides the payment model?
— Subscription is not just a payment format; it’s an entirely different delivery model. SaaS (Software as a Service) or cloud delivery implies constant product updates and allows clients to always use the latest version. Thanks to a low-code approach, one version of the product works for all universities at once, and each new feature becomes available to the entire user community. As a result, the platform already has more than 75 modules and over 300 configuration parameters tailored to different academic models.
And speaking of the advantages of the software itself, the main one is the combination of SIS and LMS in a single platform. SIS is a system for managing student data: enrollment, courses, academic performance, documents. LMS is a learning management system: courses, materials, exams, online learning. For a university, it is much more convenient to work in one system where data flows automatically: for example, a grade entered in the LMS is instantly transferred to the SIS — without manual input, which many universities still rely on. Globally, there are hundreds of SIS and more than a thousand LMS systems, but the number that work seamlessly together is extremely small.
Next, we developed a learning model builder — one of our most advanced and in-demand technologies. It gave us the ability to implement the product in universities of any profile, teaching format, grading system, language requirements and other specifics without losing quality or time.
The next step in developing HeRo Study was the concept of a “digital avatar” — a 360-degree analytics layer for all processes controlled by the system. It helps both the university and the student achieve their educational goals.
More details at Digitalbusiness.kz.
The HeRo Study startup developed a SaaS platform that enables universities to manage all processes online. Over five years, the project has raised more than $3 million in investment and now serves over 100,000 students. The path was far from easy. For the first few years, the team lived “with a one-month planning horizon,” dealing with cash flow gaps while maintaining the trust of universities — ultimately achieving stable growth.
— What were you doing before HeRo Study?
— In my 23-year professional career, I launched more than 30 startups in different roles: solo founder, investor, co-founder. I worked in manufacturing, distribution, IT and marketing. Some projects closed, others had successful exits. In 2017, I was actively developing Moxie International. It was a full ecosystem: events, IT products and educational content. We started with organizing offline seminars. We brought Brian Tracy, John Shull, Michael Roach. In parallel, we created an online platform for selling courses by global business gurus and practitioners.
— How did you arrive at the idea of launching a system for universities?
— At one of the trainings, I met the vice-rector of a leading university. She asked us to estimate the cost of developing a unified university management system for their institution. Our experience in designing EdTech products helped us compile business requirements, outline pros and cons and calculate development costs — it came to around $900,000. That amount was beyond their budget. But we were inspired by the idea, built a prototype, showed it to five more universities and offered them a subscription model instead of custom development. Four universities were interested and purchased the subscription. That’s how we became a mono-product company and launched HeRo Study.
— What else distinguished your idea from existing solutions besides the payment model?
— Subscription is not just a payment format; it’s an entirely different delivery model. SaaS (Software as a Service) or cloud delivery implies constant product updates and allows clients to always use the latest version. Thanks to a low-code approach, one version of the product works for all universities at once, and each new feature becomes available to the entire user community. As a result, the platform already has more than 75 modules and over 300 configuration parameters tailored to different academic models.
And speaking of the advantages of the software itself, the main one is the combination of SIS and LMS in a single platform. SIS is a system for managing student data: enrollment, courses, academic performance, documents. LMS is a learning management system: courses, materials, exams, online learning. For a university, it is much more convenient to work in one system where data flows automatically: for example, a grade entered in the LMS is instantly transferred to the SIS — without manual input, which many universities still rely on. Globally, there are hundreds of SIS and more than a thousand LMS systems, but the number that work seamlessly together is extremely small.
Next, we developed a learning model builder — one of our most advanced and in-demand technologies. It gave us the ability to implement the product in universities of any profile, teaching format, grading system, language requirements and other specifics without losing quality or time.
The next step in developing HeRo Study was the concept of a “digital avatar” — a 360-degree analytics layer for all processes controlled by the system. It helps both the university and the student achieve their educational goals.
More details at Digitalbusiness.kz.
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