In December 2023, EDUS pitched at Slingshot Accelerator Demo Day - the culmination of a structured programme that put us in a room with mentors, investors, and a cohort of Sri Lankan startups going through the same hard questions about product, growth, and unit economics.
What Slingshot is
Slingshot is the Hemas and Hatch joint initiative that backs early-stage Sri Lankan startups with mentorship, capital introductions, and the kind of structured operational coaching that you rarely get in informal networks. The Demo Day is where each cohort company presents what they've built, who it serves, and where it's going.
What we pitched
EDUS's pitch focused on the single problem that defines our work - high-quality, one-to-one online tutoring delivered with structure. Not a marketplace. Not a recorded library. A live, personal, accountable academic relationship between a student and a matched tutor, supported by the operational systems that keep it consistent. The pitch was followed by mentor and investor conversations.
What we took away
The most useful part of an accelerator is rarely the pitch itself - it's the months of structured questions that come before. Slingshot pushed us to sharpen the narrative around student outcomes, tutor quality control, and the operational difference between online tutoring done well and online tutoring done lazily. The photos in this album capture the team energy, the cohort camaraderie, and the demo-day moments.
