Killer Snails is Serious Business…
Jessica Ochoa Hendrix, Dr. Mandë Holford, and Dr. Lindsay Portnoy
In the three and a half years we’ve been building Killer Snails we’ve focused intensely on making products that engaged students and educators. The games we developed are made purposefully with the intention of adding value to the classroom experience. We wanted to create essential components that enables growth in learning and teaching when STEM concepts are difficult to interpret. We’ve developed an iterative Play-Break-Fix method to the design and development of all our games that involves piloting early and often with educators and school groups. This method ensures we lift up the voices of students and educators in our R&D process to produce experiences we’re certain will resonate with youth, increase engagement in the classroom, and improve STEM education.
Our unconventional approach mixes extreme biodiversity content with emerging technology to give students and educators a peak behind the curtain of what it means to be a scientist and think creatively about current issues facing our planet such as climate change and ocean preservation.
We’re happy to report our work is making an impact and has recently been featured in three high-profile business outlets:
Bloomberg’s Business Week piece by Nick Leiber showcased our piloting strategy and our ongoing mission to “figure out how we build content that is both a compelling story and scientifically accurate.”
January 25, 2019 article featuring Killer Snails!
The Forbes article by Elaine Pofeldt highlights how we got from idea stage to selling our products on Amazon and with homeschool distributor Rainbow Resource. A few tips we shared are:
1. Lean into what you love.
2. Create your own resources.
3. Source talent creatively.
February 28, 2019 article featuring Killer Snails!
Finally, we were the cover story for the U.S. Small Business Administration 2019 Edition Resource Guide. The article described how to grow your business in New York City and Downstate New York. In the article we address challenges we had as a start-up, how the SBA helped resolved some of our issues, and the benefits of having SBA support.