In a world where education and technology intersect, Dr. Pauldy Otermans, co-founder of OIAI by Otermans Institute, has paved a unique path with her innovative approach to upskilling the next generation. Despite facing challenges and setbacks, Dr. Otermans has not only persevered but thrived, leading her company to new heights with the development of AI teachers accessible to learners worldwide. In this exclusive interview, Dr. Otermans shares her journey, core values, and insights for aspiring leaders looking to make an impact in their industries.
Interviewee Name: Pauldy Otermans
Company: OIAI by Otermans Institute
Pauldy’s favourite quote: Abundance is not about providing everyone on this planet with a life of luxury—rather it’s about providing all with a life of possibility. – Peter H. Diamandis
The Interview
Before we dive into the future, let’s rewind a bit! Tell us a story: what sparked your passion for your industry and led you to where you are today?
Pauldy Otermans : We registered our company to upskill the next generation in employability skills in February 2020. This was after we saw that students were pulled away from these important skills in many developing countries. However, within 2 weeks of registering the global lockdown started. We still managed to scale our services to 9 countries in the same year but then we hit another bottleneck – we couldn’t hire more teachers. To solve this, we tried to look at non-human intelligent agents and created the world’s first publicly available AI teacher ‘Beatrice’ in January 2021 (long before ChatGPT). This teacher went on to teach for institutions and organisations like UNHCR and BCF and based on the success we pivoted our business to completely focus on providing the world AI digital teachers accessible by anyone with a smart device. Today, version 2 of the product is in market powered by our own language model OIMISA-7B, and we have serviced learners in 15 countries across 4 continents.
What core values and leadership principles have guided you in your journey as a CEO, and how have they shaped your approach to leading your company?
Pauldy Otermans : As a co-founder, I believe in trust and allowing people to find their optimum paths to achieve a target. For me, leadership is about inspiring my team members so that not only can they achieve the targets but very quickly become accustomed to beating them. Eventually, my goal is always to try and make my team members better at specific skills than I am. It inherently supercharges the company.
Can you share a pivotal moment or challenge you faced as a CEO, and the strategies you employed to overcome it while maintaining your leadership vision and guiding your team?
Pauldy Otermans : After scaling the company and generating over 300.000 USD of revenue in our initial days, we decided to focus completely on building AI teachers and relinquished our previous business model of online human-led teaching. This led to a successful development of version 2 of our product which saw over 60% course completion rates globally and individual learners asking 4 unique questions to our AI teacher in every 1 hour lesson. However, post-product development, to scale the venture we needed to raise our first external institutional funding. This led to a phase of extreme challenge when our initial leads did not invest, and key stakeholders, despite showing initial promise, left their roles as they could not generate more leads. To solve this, me and my co-founder spent 4 months connecting to more than 280 potential investors, and this eventually led to funding to scale the venture. During this time, we continued our roles to lead product development and the overall company while learning a lot about cold fundraising.
What advice would you offer to aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs who are looking to make an impact in their industries and lead their companies to success, based on your own experiences and insights?
Pauldy Otermans : If you want to achieve something you have never reached, you’ve got to do things you have never done. You have to try new things, iterate, and experiment until you find the one process that works for you and pulls you to scale.
We hope you enjoyed this insightful conversation with Pauldy Otermans. At Featured Leaders, we are committed to bringing you closer to the minds shaping our world. Stay tuned for more exclusive interviews and stories that inspire, inform, and ignite your passion for leadership. To keep up with our latest features, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media. Thank you for reading!
