Tim Cook, the engineer at the head of Apple, declared in a recent interview in La Vanguardia that “everyone should know how to program to graduate from ESO”. The Barcelona factory of companies Nuclio not only subscribes to this statement by Cook, but has also seen a business opportunity in this need. Together with Rubén Aparicio and Carlos Moreno, Nuclio has co-founded the educational start-up Minicoders.
Created at the end of 2021, the raison d'être of Minicoders is to teach programming to children between 6 and 12 years old. To achieve this goal, Aparicio had the idea of reaching this audience through the metaverse, "a channel that, without knowing it, many of them already know because they use it to play games or even to communicate," explains the entrepreneur.
In other words, Minicoders teaches programming through video games in the metaverse. "The use of regulated metaverses like Roblox combined with technologies such as virtual assistants and live video apps allows us to offer children a more complete and effective learning experience than ever," adds the entrepreneur.
Magic School, the first game experience of this emerging company, has registered more than 50,000 unique users since last July, in the Anglo-Saxon and Spanish-speaking markets. Now they have translated the contents into Portuguese to launch the game in Brazil and Portugal. "Our clients are fathers and mothers in a private capacity, but we have already received interest from schools," says Aparicio. In the first 12 months of sales, the founders expect to reach a turnover of 400,000 euros.
Headquartered at Tech Barcelona, Minicoders has just closed a round of 350,000 euros, 120,000 of which have been contributed by the founding partners, and the remaining 230,000, by various business angels and investment funds.
