The Journey to Hero
Founders, Paul and Aimie Sibson, a former primary school principal and secondary teacher, have a unique understanding of the education landscape and the specific requirements of the New Zealand school context.
LINC-ED ORIGINS
Every good Hero has an origin story. Ours begins with a lightbulb moment, when Paul identified a gap in the market’s offerings for a solution that would bring together all aspects of school life. It became increasingly apparent that harnessing technology would pave a better way forward for teachers, parents and students to share and track learning - online, real-time. Through their own experiences, Aimie and Paul also saw a strong need to reduce the administrative workload for teachers, and to improve the workflow and efficiencies for school administration.
And so, Hero's predecessor - LINC-ED - was born. The software was designed as a communication tool to share, track and analyse learning. The goal was to make students’ learning visible to all those on the learning journey (school leadership, teachers, teaching assistants) and LINC-ED introduced the concept of online, real-time reporting to families. This style of reporting extended beyond progress and achievement, to also capture learning stories and accelerate student agency.
HERO
After being accepted as 1 of 10 companies into the Vodafone Zone Accelerator Start Up programme, the decision was made to rebuild the platform from the ground up. The vision was to provide a modern, API driven solution - one that was scalable, interoperable with complimentary products, and able to meet evolving security and privacy requirements.
This rebuild was completed in 2019 with the launch of Hero, which is now in hundreds of New Zealand schools and has expanded, with great success, into South East Asia and Australia.