Who is Gürcan?
Gürcan Demirci completed his undergraduate education at Middle East Technical University, Department of Physics. He has concluded post grad studies in Business Management & Marketing at the London School of Economics. He is serial edtech company founder, his first company which produces experimental materials, special educational materials, interactive science exhibitions and science center products. The company, which has been producing and installing the Interstellar Space Exhibition, Rediscover CERN Exhibition, CSI Crime Scene Investigation Exhibition, Science in Our Lives Exhibition. In recent years, he has turned to hybrid education systems, which are of great importance all over the world, and established the VRLab Academy, which works with real scientific formulas and allows scientific experiments to be done in a virtual environment. VRLab Academy, which is currently being used in more than 28 countries, continues its efforts to ensure accessibility in education.
Tell us more about your role in VRLab Academy.
Founder and CEO of VRLab Academy. I am responsible of the internal departmental structure and global growth of VRLab Academy. With my team, I am working on the deepening of VRLab Academy, which is a deep-tech company. At the same time, I am developing strategies for the spin-off projects created by VRLab Academy to find a place in the global edtech ecosystem.
What is the most difficult part of your job? But the most rewarding one?
We are doing a job that involves intensive scientific studies. At the same time, our customers are made up of scientific circles. Therefore, product adaptation (market fit) does not occur quickly. You have to be able to build a strong team and make good choices for it. However, the most rewarding part is to see that the product you have developed with this challenge has a positive impact on the lives of many students and to increase the quality of life of future generations.
Is there anything that you would change about your professional path?
It gives me great pleasure to grow the startup we have created. We aim to print VRLab Academy among edtech decacorns. With the realization of this goal, maybe I can think about this question again.
What’s your key strategy for the development of your company?
- Working with the people who are ambitious and targeted about what they do and who can internalize VRLab Academy’s vision.
- Creating a community which has a sense of the path of education globally that are able to design future of education.
- Reaching millions of students and enabling them to have ability to solve problems in their daily lives with the assistance of VRLab Academy.
- Democratization of education and enabling students to have Access to scientific experiments no matter where they are is one of the main targets.
What do you think about the next period of time, keeping in mind the pandemic and the new business climate? How will your industry be affected?
In the new business climate that has emerged recently, you can see that people are integrating technology more into their lives. Likewise, in the Edtech sector, we have once again seen the necessity for education to reach the masses with the help of technology, regardless of time and place. In the current situation, it can be said that education has become globalized and more accessible education structures independent of the geography with the multi-curriculum system are preferred. In this way, students can reach the most effective teachers or academicians on the subject they want to study from where they are. Likewise, they have the opportunity to use high-tech devices online. We expect this situation to escalate rather than going backwards.
Please name a few technologies which have the greatest impact on your business.
First of all virtual reality technology has the biggest impact for sure. Then we are impelementing AI to our codes benefiting from game technolgy and machine learning for different projects.
What books do you have on your nightstand?
- Margaret O’Mara : The Code
- Daniel Kahneman : Thinking, Fast and Slow
