This weeks’ startup is GoHisto, a virtual history tutor. It allows customers to learn history and to prepare for State History exams by doing various tasks and taking numerous tests. What helps GoHisto team to make this product unique, and why it is so popular in Lithuania, Simas Jaskutėlis Co-Founder and CEO at GoHisto reveals in this interview.

So what is GoHisto? How it works?

GoHisto is a personalized e-learning program, which purpose is to make learning as effective and as fun as possible. Currently program is available for Lithuanian students, preparing for State History Exam. Program is designed in a way that every student gets his own personalized learning material and data about his own weaknesses – his knowledge gaps, which can be fulfilled with the help of the learning material program provides.

What are your competitors and competitive advantages?

Our competitor is any education product for learning – whether it is a simple textbook or more complex e-learning solution. Our competitive advantage is our philosophy on learning which helps us to make our products unique. From day 1 we focused on improving our e-learning program so it could serve the needs of different kinds of students. We continue to develop our program with the help of new insights, research data and customers feedback.

What were the reasons behind coming up with this idea and launching this product?

We were different students with different studying tactics and different results. We realized that even if the motivation is there, the preparation for some particular exam can be very tricky and the biggest challenge that students face is not knowing their knowledge gaps. Basically, if you know what you don’t know, you can focus on your weaknesses and prepare for the assessment. But only extraordinary students are able to identify their knowledge gaps on their own – that’s why we built e-learning program which helps to pinpoint the gaps for every regular student.

When exactly did you launch, what were the main challenges before launching?

We launched BETA version on June 2014 and full State History Exam version (www.GoHisto.lt) on November 2014. We started collecting payments in early 2015. The biggest challenge before the launch was the team hiring since every team member was crucial for this stage of the startup.

What are main challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming them?

There are many distractions that are not essential for our product developing and startups success so we are trying to allocate our limited resources as wisely as possible. Prioritizing is easier when team has it’s clear strategy. Years of experience working with the product and lessons learned surely help a lot.

How are you funded? Do you seek extra funding?

GoHisto won “Hyundai Brilliant Young Entrepreneurs Award” in early 2014. For the moment GoHisto doesn’t look for extra funding, however, team is working closely with few interested parties.

Please introduce your founders, your core team and your broader team?

GoHisto was co-founded by Simas Jaskutėlis and Julius Pauliukevičius. Simas Jaskutėlis is the acting CEO of GoHisto and current team consists of 6 people – developers, sales and content managers.

How has business been so far? Could you share some numbers to illustrate this (users, sales, etc)?

25k students from more than 250 schools in Lithuania prepared for State History Exam with GoHisto.

Future plans, ambitions? Simply speaking – what’s next?

GoHisto is working on introducing new education related products to new markets.

Thank you, Simas, for this interview!