Brisbane-based education program STEM Punks recently took out the 2019 Queensland Emerging and Energised award at the Telstra Business Awards.
STEM Punks says science, technology, engineering and math education should be accessible for everyone, and is working to make that a reality.
“From a team point of view this is a great accolade because it is really hard to put together and to get to the point of winning, even being finalists. It is so good for the team because it really acknowledges all the hard work we have done,” founder Michael Holmstrom says.
“Having done our startup mentoring out of UQ, QUT and Griffith universities, something that we quickly realised is that there is no lack of ideas. But what we are lacking is the ability for people to take those ideas and transform them into value for people.
“I think the big difference between us and what everyone else is doing in this space is that we don’t necessarily believe STEM education is about turning every kid into a coder or a drone pilot. It is more about getting those kids to understand how to transform their ideas into value.
“I’ve met with some amazing people with amazing qualifications, but they still struggle to transform their ideas into value, which is especially detrimental when trying to sell their idea.”
Through Michael’s background as an engineer and passion for innovation, technology and commercialisation over the past 15 years, he realised there was more to life than business and engineering, and stepped out into the world of entrepreneurship.
He co-founded his first startup in 2002, then in 2016 and six different startups later STEM Punks was created.
Taking his passion in education, technology, innovation and commercialisation, STEM Punks was founded as an institution that takes both kids and adults on a journey to teach them the mindset of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.
“Back then I didn't know there was a big push for STEM in schools, this kind of came later on,” Michael says.
“We started from a garage doing after-school programs and now we are delivering our programs all over Australia and have expanded into Asia and the US. We have a fantastic team of really passionate educators who deliver these programs.”
While the STEM Punks team strongly believes that STEM skills are at the core of what they do to solve problems, they also mix in entrepreneurial thinking to get kids and adults to understand how to apply those STEM skills to solve real world problems.
“We are currently seeing a lot of major problems happening around the world, from poverty to climate change to energy,” Michael says.
“All of these massive problems need to be solved by people and what we try and do is get children and adults into the mindset where they can apply skills to really attack those problems and make the world better for everyone in the end.
“It all comes back to the mission we have to inspire tomorrow’s innovators.”
While there is a lot of push towards turning kids into entrepreneurs, Michael thinks that it is more important to focus on problem solving.
“While it is very important to give kids a fundamental understanding of STEM, I then think we need steer towards what we are trying to solve and the mindset we are trying to enable with those skills.
“This way whatever the kids decide to become they can still apply the mindset to really enhance what they are trying to create in all different types of fields, not just STEM.”
Having been involved in startups for many years, Michael is well attuned to the rollercoaster that is the startup journey.
“The biggest challenge we have is to manage sustainable growth. We don’t have a lack of opportunity; what we have to do is be very strategic about the opportunities we take,” Michael says.
“Some of those opportunities can take you down a rabbit hole, which means you aren’t making the growth you need and you’re distracted from your core values and skills.
“With this in mind, the biggest challenge we have is to select the right opportunities that enable sustainable growth.”
The highlights have also been many.
“The Telstra Business Awards was a big one for us. The other big win is to see how we have grown. From running small classes in a garage to getting bigger projects, which you run over a couple of years with big school classes, to me is incredible. It means that the market understands and sees tremendous value in what we are doing,” Michael says.
STEM Punks has been self-funded from day one.
“We’ve been quite careful in regards to equity funding and trying to get other parties involved. STEM Punks is all privately owned at the moment.
“I think there will come a point very soon where STEM Punks will need equity due to the higher volume of people we are catering for, but I’m not sure if we are ready yet.
“What we do is run a very bootstrapped approach. We take all the proceeds and all the revenue, equity and profits and put it back into the business to build it.”
From here the biggest challenge STEM Punks will face is scalability.
“If we keep going how we have previously, delivering programs face to face, it will become very human resource intense. What we are doing to combat this is building a core base team of very highly skilled STEM educators and utilising our new e-learning platform,” Michael says.
“This online e-learning platform will be our first growth path. It is already working really well for schools who can access world-leading STEM content and a turnkey blueprint for STEM education in the classroom.
“The second growth path, which has come out this week, is our STEM education for the home market. We are selling STEM education tools for kids to do at home that are then backed up by a learning journey and content developed by teachers for students doing this at home.”
With exciting things in the works, STEM Punks is working with Channel 10 for their Scope science show, they are forming partnerships with larger international education institutions like Navitas - an international provider of english education for overseas students - and their innovation entrepreneurship programs have recently achieved university accreditation.
