FUNDED: Brilliant Entrepreneurs and Founders
At the heart of their towns and cities, wonderful local businesses and social enterprises are the vital spark in their communities. Our guests may all be brilliant but they're also real and relatable, with practical insights and tips to share.
All are united by one factor: they had a dream to grow, and used finance from the Business Enterprise Fund, a non-profit social enterprise, to make it happen. And our guests give us the inside story about their business journeys and all the lessons learned on the way in these fascinating and candid interviews with people facing the same business challenges you do.
FUNDED: Brilliant Entrepreneurs and Founders
"Kids Played Maths for Two Hours on Christmas Morning": The Mi-box Live Story with Chris Withers
"I thought, right, I'm 43 and this is the thing that I need to do. This is my thing," says Chris Withers, inventor of the board game combining sports challenges with maths, Mi-box Live.
The former teaching assistant has designed and created an innovative board game and app that transforms mathematics learning into a fun, interactive experience.
Drawing on his background in education and his own experiences at school – "I was a good sportsman, but struggled to read and write at school. So I struggled to understand maths questions, even though I could do the maths," Chris designed a game that combines sports themes with mathematics to engage children in a way traditional worksheets hadn't.
Mi-box Live addresses a crucial gap in educational resources by making mathematics enjoyable, social, and accessible to players of all abilities.
With features that allow players of different skill levels to compete fairly, the game creates a unique learning environment where children are celebrating for engaging in maths, sometimes playing for hours without realising they're practicing essential skills.
In this episode, Chris covers:
- How his experiences as a teaching assistant inspired the creation of Mi-box Live
- The evolution of the game from simple classroom materials to a professional product
- Securing £50,000 from Innovate UK and a £70,000 loan from the Business Enterprise Fund
- Why the sports theme and competitive element are crucial to the game's success
- How the app enables family members of different abilities to play together
- Working with manufacturers in China to develop and refine the physical product
- His approach to protecting intellectual property across multiple territories
- Early success stories including children playing "two hours of maths on Christmas morning"
- Research showing improved speed and accuracy in mathematics after playing the game
- Building a two-pronged market approach targeting both schools and parents
What next?
- More about Mi-box Live: https://miboxlive.com
- More about the Business Enterprise Fund (BEF): https://www.befund.org/about
FUNDED: Brilliant Entrepreneurs and Founders is a podcast by the Business Enterprise Fund a social enterprise dedicated to breaking the "finance shackles" faced by many small and medium-sized enterprises & social enterprises.
Find BEF online at https://www.befund.org and on LInkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/business-enterprise-fund/
• This podcast is produced and edited by Jamie Veitch https://www.jamieveitch.co.uk/
• The music is "Aerosol of my Love" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Artwork design by Research Retold https://www.researchretold.com
