Incubation helps turn an idea for educational boardgames into a market-ready product
Latvian company Navigate the Future creates educational boardgames that spark children’s and young people’s interest in STEM subjects and introduce them to future careers. The company has been part of the business incubation programme set up by the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) in Sigulda since July 2024. Support from the programme has helped develop the initial prototypes for games into finished products, which are already available in shops in Latvia and Lithuania.
Participation in the incubation programme was a deliberate choice; Navigate the Future was founded shortly before applying for the programme. The company’s co-founders Tatjana Bonda and Ella Kalniņa had already researched various incubation opportunities and heard feedback from other companies.
“We had a prototype of the game and a clear vision of what we wanted to create, so we were looking for the most suitable support for the product’s further development. We also considered other options, but concluded that, in the early stages of the company, the LIAA business incubation programme would be the best one for us. We’d also heard very good feedback about the LIAA office in Sigulda, so we knew where we wanted to be and why,” says Tatjana Bonda, co-founder of Navigate the Future.
LIAA financial support was used to develop and design prototype games, to test the products in schools and at camps, and to translate and adapt the content into several languages. As the information included in the games must be both accurate and appropriate for the specific age group, the support also enabled the team to engage specialists from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Educational Innovation at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Latvia to review the questions and educational content. Co-funding has also been used for design and marketing activities required to bring new products to market.
“In the early years of a company’s operations, financial support is extremely important, as sales revenue does not yet allow us to carry out everything required for the development and marketing of new products. Of course, we also have to invest our own funds, but the opportunity to receive co-funding allows us to continue our development in a much more focused way,” Tatjana Bonda emphasises.
Just as valuable to the company as the financial assistance has been the structure provided by the programme. Deadlines and the need to regularly plan activities and assess progress have helped discipline our work and drive product development forward more quickly.
“The incubation programme places a new business within a defined framework – there are deadlines to meet and specific tasks to complete. This encourages us from time to time to get a move on, not to put things off, and to drive processes forward more quickly. Such a system is extremely valuable for a new project,” says Tatjana.
Although getting to grips with the programme’s administrative requirements took some time initially, the company views its collaboration with the LIAA positively overall and recommends that other start-ups also take advantage of the incubation opportunity.
Information material prepared with the support of the European Regional Development Fund