Ping Pong Story, founded by Debora Rubin in 2013, is a web platform that offers an innovative writing experience that allows children to write stories online, add their own images, connect with other kids, and share their stories with their loved ones. Debora Rubin, an entrepreneur that believes Internet usage and literacy levels of children are proportional to each other, thus she seize this opportunity and combine the two together. Ping Pong Story currently operates up to 10 employees directly competes with businesses in the education, and entertainment industry. Social entrepreneur Debora Rubin identified an opportunity by observing market trends and needs. She saw children’s literacy levels are changing and decreasing, while digital media and Internet usages by children are increasing, thus she came up with a solution by using the Internet and digital media technology as a teaching tool to assist children in increasing their reading skills, writing skills, imagination, creativity, and collaboration.
Social entrepreneurial is the start of a business that’s main concern is the impact on its consumers and users not the money it makes off them. Ping Pong Story offers free services to users and its revenue model is based on amount of users that signs up. By offering free services to users, it is hard for the business to expand as resources limit it, thus Ping Pong Story is seeking government financing and investments. She has the confidence and self-disciplined to keep her passion alive.
The pain in markets is the problem that the new product or services solves. The bigger the pain is, the more opportunity will be exist. One of the pains that Ping Pong Story solves is that with the increase in technology use in children it lowers the literacy level of children between ages 6 to 13 due to the fact that children spends more time on games, watching video and movies on tablets, computers. The business utilizes these technologies and digital media, which allow children to write their stories, add images, connect with other kids, and share their stories to increase their literacy levels. Another pain that Ping Pong Story solves is that it decreases the need of flexible time for parents, such as dropping off children to schools and picking them up afterwards.
The business is a suboptimal solution, which is defined as a product or service that with its introduction satisfies more of the market than before its existence. Before Ping Pong Story was founded, parents would only think of sending their children to preschools, kindergartens, and tutors to increase their children’s literacy level but resulting in little improvements of it’s literacy level, however after the business was founded, parents are able to educate and significantly improve on their literacy skills of their children from home through the web platform it offers.
In the education industry competition is huge because not only the business has to offer what the public institution offers, it also has to hold a competitive advantage over the privately held competitors. Ping Pong Story offers educational service to children from home, compare to public institution children have to show up in person. Ping Pong Story platform also increases communication and build a better relationship between parents and children, whereas