Everything begins with a story. Stories change lives. Stories change the world.

And we all have stories and worlds to share, yet most of us struggle to express our thoughts on paper. At Creader.io, our mission is to better enable expression, not replace in the age of AI.

As part of user and market research for our creative storytelling app, I find myself in Southeast Asia, home to the largest market for Wattpad, the popular fanfiction and literature platform.

So here I am, on the back of motorcycles roaring through the capital cities of Southeast Asia, flying between Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam. Our target? International schools.

We didn’t choose schools blindly, it was the result of market research for a couple months at an arts and craft market where close to 40% of highly engaged visitors including parents, teachers, students all said Creader belonged in a classroom for creative writing, English and literature.

And Southeast Asia is the place to be.

“You’ve come to the right place, Southeast Asia is absolutely the right place to be” declares the director of education of a Bangkok STEM school who hails from Italy. “There is so much potential here for everyone. We’re in need of talent.”

“This is good. Great job guys. You got to keep it up. Keep going. You got this. Absolutely you should be going to schools. International schools are your right market. Focus on education first, good place to start.”

In the end, they did not become our first user as they wanted something battle tested in a classroom beyond an untested prototype, but expressed interest in staying in touch for later.

Reality quickly sets in. I'm in Jakarta, sweating in the heat, humidity and fumes of a city of 40 million people. It was long days running from school to school, 8 am to 4 pm days on end on the back of loud noisy motorbikes in the tropical heat. By the time I’m back in the hotel, I’m drenched in sweat lying in bed, too exhausted to move.

Security is tight within Jakarta and at most schools I’m stopped outside at the guardhouse, unable to visit reception. For the whole week, I go without meeting any teachers or hear back from any of the letters nor emails I had left behind. I leave Jakarta empty-handed. Zero to one is always the hardest.

Next stop - Singapore, a state city positioning itself as the AI hub of Asia. It sounds very promising, until one school principal points out to us, “this is great, but do you know how many startups stop by trying to pitch us software for students? We get this kind of stuff ALL the time!” Competition for attention is going to be intense and this is not going to be an easy city to break into.

I have one shot remaining. Ho Chi Minh.

On the last day, I find myself standing outside an European styled heritage building. I inform reception of what we’re building. She is skeptical but makes the call to the principal. “Please take a seat, he is on his way back from lunch.”

Minutes later, I’m ushered into an office. “I love London” booms the jovial American principal seated across me when I inform him our startup is London based. I noticed scattered across his desk were books, piles and piles of books. For most of the next hour, we chat about Vietnam, history, literature and the adventures in our lives that led us to Asia. I don’t mention Creader until the end when I give a short demo. “I’ll meet your friend in London” were his parting words.

So I fly home.

A week later after one short intro call, we have a deal. He will use Creader during summer school among a small class of students that he will personally instruct. If it delivers, then come September there is the potential of school wide deployment for the regular school year. More importantly, trying it this summer allows us to go back in September to all the interested schools from earlier that just wanted slightly more validation.

Now we prepare for the summer ahead.