Meet the Founders of Team Repair, Megan, Anaïs and Oscar: “50% of students said they were more likely to fix something in the future”
1. Describe your startup in two sentences.
Megan: Team Repair is on a mission to spark a passion for repair in the next generation. Our first programme provides gadgets with built-in faults for children for them to fix using our digital content, carefully developed to teach core repair skills and the science behind how real products work.
2. What gave you the inspiration?
Megan: When we were younger, we enjoyed taking broken things apart and trying to fix them. This was the activity that inspired us to become Engineers and live more sustainably by repairing rather than throw away.
When we started thinking about how we could tackle the e-waste crisis and reduce consumption, we thought about how we could inspire the next generation to repair like we grew up doing. We posted a question on Reddit asking “Why do you think we don’t repair things like our Grandparents did?” and the common response was that people now don’t have the confidence to try repairing, especially with electronics.
That’s when Oscar said “Why don’t we just send broken toys to children and teach them how to fix them” and the rest is history.
3. How did you meet?
Megan: We met on our first day at university studying Design Engineering at Imperial College London. We were all in the same tutor group and worked on projects together throughout our 4 years of studying.
In our final year, we had a module focused on creating a Startup to meet one of the UN SDGs, and we decided to create a business that built on our interest in repairing.
Megan Hale, Anaïs Engelmann and Oscar Jones, Founders of Team Repair
4. What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?
Anaïs: Our greatest success to date was when we first launched our at-home programme for parents to trial. There was such excitement the first time we made our products available, and immediately we had eager parents purchase.
Our greatest challenge was after this launch when we realised there were many market opportunities for Team Repair, but we didn’t have enough time to try them all. This meant in the last year we had to make the decision to prioritise launching the product to parents and then schools, so we could benefit most from their feedback for our product iterations. This meant we had to shift our focus from coming up with new product ideas (which is our favourite part!) until we’d first found the product market fit.
5. What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?
Anaïs - We give students some questions to answer before and after completing our programme. After just 1 session, from data collected across 10 classes from state schools, 50% of students said they were more likely to fix something in the future, 28% of students said they had had an increased interest in a STEM career, and 16% of students said they had an increased interest in a job that was good for the planet, with percentages being around 10% higher when looking at girls only. It was 38% of students’ first time repairing something, and again, this was noticeably higher for girls, at 60%!
6. When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up?
Anaïs - Author
Oscar & Megan - Inventor
7. If you weren’t doing this, what would be your plan B?
Megan - Another Start Up - I couldn’t imagine doing anything else
Anaïs - Sustainable product design for a design studio
Oscar - Design Engineering for an innovative company
8. What would you save in a fire?
Megan - My houseplants
Anaïs - Cello
Oscar - Photo albums
9. Who is your role model/ greatest influence? And why?
Anaïs - Taylor Swift
Oscar - GCSE Maths Teacher Mrs Sharples & Maths Personality Matt Parker - Formative time of having fun solving problems
10. What is your happy track?
Anaïs & Megan - Taylor Swift - Any song (we are very big fans)
Oscar - Toploader - Dancing in the Moonlight
11. What is your motto? What are your company values?
Sustainability - promote a considerate mindset
Inclusivity - everyone in society deserves representation and opportunity
Curiosity - spark moments of understanding and imagination
12. What are you most looking forward to in the next year?
Megan: Teaching even more children how to Repair and seeing the impact of our programme!