How it got started
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What's in a Name
Liber is a Latin word that has two meanings: book and freedom. LiberCloud attempted to solve a ‘book’ problem, as books alone have been proven to be not fully effective at improving the education of all students. It also attempted to solve a flexibility and ‘freedom’ problem to give educators a platform that liberated them from any constraints. The logo epitomized both aspects: a flying bird signifies freedom, its wings designed to evoke a book!
Product Roadmap, Launch, and Exit
The Initial Minimal Viable Product
The MVP of the EdTech solution was conceived as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to improve the development and delivery of training material and coursework. The MVP focused on eBook publishing for teachers and content authors allowing them to create and publish interactive multimedia eBooks from their coursework. Most of the eBooks back then were relatively static and provided nothing more than an electronic version of the paper-based course books.
We chose to adopt the ePub format that had been adopted by Apple and made popular in iOS by the iBooks app. The eBooks were interactive and engaging on iOS but achieving the same on Android proved to be a taller order given there was no standard format or leading eBook viewer or app for Android.
LiberCanvas and Collaborating on Learning Content: new focus
As we market tested the MVP, we realized that the new platform could be augmented to address an even more pressing issue facing educators: the inflexibility of courseware and books which prevented them from adopting new teaching strategies. The time, effort, and in some cases the personal out-of-pocket costs required to customize courseware to classrooms or students were unrealistic, and we had a solution to address that and make teachers more effective.
This realization led us to enhance the platform to reduce the time to create and manage courseware so educators, trainers, and other vested people could spend more time with students, therefore emphasizing the modularity of LiberCloud courseware, the collaboration aspects and free-form canvas-based functionality. The company released LiberCanvas on the Apple App Store in 2014 and followed with an Android app on Google Play. Its corresponding Interactive White Board web application became the centerpiece of in-classroom and out-of-classroom real-time collaboration among teachers and students.
LiberTest and Integrated Assessments: the new breakthrough idea
A critical realization occurred in early 2015: the website and apps were consistently rated high by teachers; however, adoption and utilization had been slow to pick up. Further research showed that the new system while made teacher’s life easier it required a substantial effort on their part to reach a stable state when time savings and better education outcomes could be achieved. While early adopter teachers jumped in and sacrificed some of their personal time, the not so early adopters or pragmatist peers presented a challenge.
To appeal to the pragmatists LiberCloud needed something that helped them save time right away, as the benefits of modular courseware authoring would be seen and adopted later. Reasoning that teachers were spending their evenings in preparing or grading tests, we concluded we could give them back their evenings by building a more robust and flexible assessments functionality than what we had. So, we released in late 2015 a new assessment platform, that did not have its own silos of data but it was seamlessly integrated with the content and collaboration platform.
The assessment platform offered graded tests and non-graded testing, it provided features for rapid real-time assessments, for quick polls and surveys, as well as comprehensive list of question types to create quizzes and end of period tests for summative assessments, and offered real-time reports and analytics. This breakthrough eventually provided the increased utilization and adoption.
LiberCloud became a comprehensive learning content management, collaboration, and assessment platform that simplified the management of coursework and all interactions between educators and students. It provided a “best of both worlds” solution, providing an interactive, engaging training platform that could be used for instructor-led training in a classroom setting as well as for self-paced or self-directed training. It included features that fully engaged learners, which led to higher comprehension and retention.
The patent
LiberCloud filed a patent with the US PTO covering some of the innovative collaboration and content aggregation features. As of December 2018, the patent is still pending.
LiberCloud adoption then the decision to exit
LiberCloud made inroads in Italy, enrolling a few dozen resellers selling technology solutions to schools, and signing up several dozen of schools across Italy by the end of 2016. However, growth and adoption had been much slower than planned, and it wasn't going to get easier as competition moved in.
In hindsight, the product-market fit wasn't quite there. LiberCloud was a great product/idea, had a first-mover advantage in the chosen market, but timing and place were bad as Italy proved to be a tough market to build a viable business. The decision to use the Italian market as a beachhead proved to be a bad judgment call.
One of the missed readings on the market was the unstable political climate during the time, as our primary customers were public schools and teachers in those schools who depended on additional public funding for new technology — all concerns that eventually also doomed the efforts to raise new capital.
Reaching a state of a vibrant and growing company was a long way off and the lack of sufficient funds made the decision to cease operations necessary. Schools were provided with adequate notice, and LiberCloud service went offline at the end of July 2018 and closed in December 2018.
The MVP of the EdTech solution was conceived as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to improve the development and delivery of training material and coursework. The MVP focused on eBook publishing for teachers and content authors allowing them to create and publish interactive multimedia eBooks from their coursework. Most of the eBooks back then were relatively static and provided nothing more than an electronic version of the paper-based course books.
We chose to adopt the ePub format that had been adopted by Apple and made popular in iOS by the iBooks app. The eBooks were interactive and engaging on iOS but achieving the same on Android proved to be a taller order given there was no standard format or leading eBook viewer or app for Android.
LiberCanvas and Collaborating on Learning Content: new focus
As we market tested the MVP, we realized that the new platform could be augmented to address an even more pressing issue facing educators: the inflexibility of courseware and books which prevented them from adopting new teaching strategies. The time, effort, and in some cases the personal out-of-pocket costs required to customize courseware to classrooms or students were unrealistic, and we had a solution to address that and make teachers more effective.
This realization led us to enhance the platform to reduce the time to create and manage courseware so educators, trainers, and other vested people could spend more time with students, therefore emphasizing the modularity of LiberCloud courseware, the collaboration aspects and free-form canvas-based functionality. The company released LiberCanvas on the Apple App Store in 2014 and followed with an Android app on Google Play. Its corresponding Interactive White Board web application became the centerpiece of in-classroom and out-of-classroom real-time collaboration among teachers and students.
LiberTest and Integrated Assessments: the new breakthrough idea
A critical realization occurred in early 2015: the website and apps were consistently rated high by teachers; however, adoption and utilization had been slow to pick up. Further research showed that the new system while made teacher’s life easier it required a substantial effort on their part to reach a stable state when time savings and better education outcomes could be achieved. While early adopter teachers jumped in and sacrificed some of their personal time, the not so early adopters or pragmatist peers presented a challenge.
To appeal to the pragmatists LiberCloud needed something that helped them save time right away, as the benefits of modular courseware authoring would be seen and adopted later. Reasoning that teachers were spending their evenings in preparing or grading tests, we concluded we could give them back their evenings by building a more robust and flexible assessments functionality than what we had. So, we released in late 2015 a new assessment platform, that did not have its own silos of data but it was seamlessly integrated with the content and collaboration platform.
The assessment platform offered graded tests and non-graded testing, it provided features for rapid real-time assessments, for quick polls and surveys, as well as comprehensive list of question types to create quizzes and end of period tests for summative assessments, and offered real-time reports and analytics. This breakthrough eventually provided the increased utilization and adoption.
LiberCloud became a comprehensive learning content management, collaboration, and assessment platform that simplified the management of coursework and all interactions between educators and students. It provided a “best of both worlds” solution, providing an interactive, engaging training platform that could be used for instructor-led training in a classroom setting as well as for self-paced or self-directed training. It included features that fully engaged learners, which led to higher comprehension and retention.
The patent
LiberCloud filed a patent with the US PTO covering some of the innovative collaboration and content aggregation features. As of December 2018, the patent is still pending.
LiberCloud adoption then the decision to exit
LiberCloud made inroads in Italy, enrolling a few dozen resellers selling technology solutions to schools, and signing up several dozen of schools across Italy by the end of 2016. However, growth and adoption had been much slower than planned, and it wasn't going to get easier as competition moved in.
In hindsight, the product-market fit wasn't quite there. LiberCloud was a great product/idea, had a first-mover advantage in the chosen market, but timing and place were bad as Italy proved to be a tough market to build a viable business. The decision to use the Italian market as a beachhead proved to be a bad judgment call.
One of the missed readings on the market was the unstable political climate during the time, as our primary customers were public schools and teachers in those schools who depended on additional public funding for new technology — all concerns that eventually also doomed the efforts to raise new capital.
Reaching a state of a vibrant and growing company was a long way off and the lack of sufficient funds made the decision to cease operations necessary. Schools were provided with adequate notice, and LiberCloud service went offline at the end of July 2018 and closed in December 2018.
Development Team
Felice Curcelli co-founded LiberCloud after many years helping companies leverage the power of the Internet to improve business processes. A pioneer of Software-as-a-Service and expert in cloud computing, he had held management roles at large corporations and startups before starting LiberCloud. He bootstrapped the company operations then led the product development, design, and QA of the platform features, and the management of the global SaaS infrastructure. He led a global team of developers, designers, and testers distributed around the world. His resourcefulness and customer-focus enabled the company to fulfill the product plans with a very limited budget.
Krunoslav Djakovich became the engineering and development lead for both web services and mobile apps. His vast knowledge of programming languages and platforms contributed to the team productivity and the incredible amount of innovative features we delivered.
Mirko Jokic was the UI and graphic designer and lead. His minimalist approach in user interface design contributed to the easy-to-use kudos we received through the years.
Krunoslav Djakovich became the engineering and development lead for both web services and mobile apps. His vast knowledge of programming languages and platforms contributed to the team productivity and the incredible amount of innovative features we delivered.
Mirko Jokic was the UI and graphic designer and lead. His minimalist approach in user interface design contributed to the easy-to-use kudos we received through the years.
