UNDERSTANDING MY WHO
Building Sorone for my community of early childhood teachers
I’m building an app for early childhood teachers.
But I’m still teaching five days a week. I’m still doing the job this app is meant to help with. And honestly? That’s my superpower.
Because I’m not building Sorone from theory, I’m building it from pain, frustration, and lived reality.
I’ve watched colleagues test my prototypes. I saw them hesitate over buttons that made perfect sense to me but not to them. So I changed it, removing everything that caused friction in the hope that it would work better for them. I get to test my app in the middle of a school day, and I see it in action and how many different teachers use it.
Soon, I’ll be moving countries (because I need a fuller plate), to another international school, with another group of teachers and another chance to ask:
“Is this part of your day annoying too?”
“Want to try something I’m building that might help?”
I’m bootstrapping (using my own money) Sorone on my teacher’s salary. I’m not backed by VC funding or building for some abstract “market.”
I’m building for us, my fellow early childhood teachers, who take hundreds of photos and try to stay organised while producing robust documentation supported by photos that tell a story. Teachers who are asked to use tools built for elementary students or the whole school are often tired of adapting to systems that were never designed for their teaching methods.
In other industries, teams have access to a range of productivity tools. In early childhood, we adapt, cope or stay late; we deserve better tools.
I’m building Sorone slowly, balancing a full teaching load, an international move, and the everyday demands of life. Some days, it feels like too much. I’ve been overwhelmed, I’ve doubted myself, I’ve hit walls I didn’t see coming, and I've almost given up.
But I keep going because I remember the real problem I’m solving. I remember how frustrating photo documentation can be and how much smoother it could be with the right tool. That’s what I’m building: honestly, thoughtfully, and with a deep understanding of what we do and need.
And of course, like most things in early childhood, we don’t keep good ideas to ourselves. Sorone might have been built for us, but anyone who takes photos and wants to stay organised is welcome here.