Edorble, R Ventures, and Refugee Entrepreneurship

Although Edorble is a for-profit company, we are always trying to see how we can have a positive social impact in the world of education and virtual reality, particularly with marginalized groups who haven't had the best access to resources or infrastructure. Because of mutual connections at Educomp, we were contacted by R Ventures, an Amsterdam-based group with the goal of helping refugees becoming skilled entrepreneurs. The first cohort at R Ventures has an emphasis on VR and education technology, areas that we've developed expertise in over the years. Because of this, we've been providing mentorship and advice to the refugees at R Ventures about how they can get started with VR development and put together a team that can bring VR products to life. Eventually, we hope the R Ventures crew can help us develop projects for Edorble clients! Based on what we've seen from their refugees already, we don't doubt that this can be a reality. Mohammed, Basel, and Hasan - the world is yours for the taking.

We had our first in-person meeting at the VR Arcade at Raven (thanks Raven!), where the R Ventures cohort got to see some incredible VR experiences for themselves with Cederik from Edorble and Tom from Raven. In VR, they went underwater and to the top of skyscrapers and were assuredly "wowed" by the immersive experiences at Raven. In the words of Mohammed, they left with "certainty that VR technology is here to stay".

After minds were blown in VR, Edorble co-founder Cederik met with them and talked about how to get started with VR development and also provided some guidance on team building and management. From simpler tools like Google Blocks to the more advanced Unity 3D, Cederik showed them a variety of ways they could create compelling VR content from both the programming and design perspective. We also have two of their cohort enrolled in our course about Unity and the Edorble Creator Tools on Edorble Academy, which has been a great way to give them a gentle introduction to Unity. Check it out if you want!

We're grateful for the opportunity to help this group get started, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with them and R Ventures as they progress on this journey!

If you'd like to hear more about how Edorble can help teams that want to make moves with VR and education, shoot us an email at gabe@edorble.com

If you want to get in touch with R Ventures about what they do, shoot Archish an email at archish at rventurescapital.com