Not all founders dreamed of creating their own startup. Some, like Györgyi Szakmár, were driven by a vision.
Growing up in Communist Hungary where everything was built for the community, exposure to the world of entrepreneurship was a rarity. Nevertheless, multimedia designer and entrepreneur Györgyi Szakmár (Gira) had one important role model: her father.
“He had an entrepreneurial mind. He was really excited about new things, excited about starting from scratch, building something on your own,” she explains. Yet for years, she resisted the lure of starting her own company, seeing it more as a burden than a gift. She opted for the “well-paying job”, working her way up as a game developer, a then male-dominated field. “In Hungary, all women work to contribute to the financial stability of the family. From my mum, I learned that I can do whatever men can do, even better”, the entrepreneur smiles.
Gender (in)equity
Despite a female-male split of 1-100 in the places she worked, Gira thrived, working in Hungary and Denmark. “I never had a salary gap or pushback. I was always considered equal. And I didn’t feel I was treated differently until I came to Luxembourg,” she says. She recalls the moment she opened a shared bank account with her husband, who had a different last name to her. She was shocked to see that on the card, the bank gave her her husband’s last name.
At the time, her two small girls only spoke Hungarian. To ease the process, Gira developed game-based learning tools. “It’s impressive how easily kids can learn through play. Even little animals learn by playing. But we forget this,” she says, adding: “Of course, you can say that screen time is bad. But, I think this is the same kind of conversation my mother had with her mother about spending too many hours with books. And the same conversation my Mum had with me about spending too much time in front of the TV.”
The seed of an idea
The conviction that effective education should be entertaining brought Gira to the idea of creating a series of educational video games for children. She was one of four founders who created EduGamiTec in 2018. Five years on she says that she has had the full package: “I was a game developer, a mum, a teacher. I had a team behind me and I tried very hard to raise funds.”
In 2020, EduGamiTec raised €100k to develop the Memomoti, a scalable technology and community platform, allowing learners, parents, teachers, publishers, and digital media businesses to embed educational content in entertaining games and media. The startup struggled to gain traction and, in 2021, it pivoted into corporate training.
Horizon Europe project
It submitted a Horizon Europe proposal for a concept to ensure enhanced citizen preparedness in the event of a disaster or crisis-related emergency, which was accepted. As a result, EduGamiTec is part of a 15-strong consortium that for the next three years will develop a VR game, gameified learning application and a disaster encyclopedia, based on the startup’s Gamtred learning management solution. “The game helps you figure out what to do before the firefighters or police attend,” Gira explains.
While sad to have pivoted away from her original target: young learners, the entrepreneur says it helps to know that her work is helping people. And she has not given up on developing youth education games. Thanks to the company’s experience, it will “tick all of the boxes” if they are approached by a customer seeking a game for schools. The startup is also developing tools for regions and users with low connectivity.
Fundraising & growth
Five years into the venture, the team has one dedicated full-time employee and four part-time employees. Gira, meanwhile, returned to full-time work. “I’m now working 1.5 jobs,” she laughs. Further fundraising could help but, as she points out, “fundraising is a full-time job.” What is more, she has mixed feelings about the potential for VC to overcome unconscious biases against women. “These biases make VCs question whether a woman will still be there if something happens to the family,” says Gira. While she has never been asked that question, investors have confided that it is harder to believe this of a woman. “For a man, it seems there is less chance he will drop everything for family.”
Gira and her team are now working on further building up their customer base, hiring for full-stack developer and part-time UI/UX designer positions. What is more, they are open to investors.
