About Us | FeedbackFruits

Where the story begins

FeedbackFruits is an Edtech company, founded in 2012 at TU Delft, the Netherlands, in a forgotten room at the Physics department. It was the experience of re-designing his master’s curriculum in Sustainability Technology that brought our CEO and co-founder Ewoud de Kok to suddenly realize: why does the communication in education have to be a one-way only system?

From this question FeedbackFruits has become a driver of the transformation to active learning at the best universities worldwide.

2012

Bootstrapped at TU Delft

FeedbackFruits' first app for students was built in a forgotten room of applied physics at TU Delft. The idea was to give timely, direct feedback to teachers on courses after each class session.

The same year, TU Delft became our 1st founding partner and gave us the financial push needed to kick off FeedbackFruits.

While the app may have been a failure, the desire to use technology to change passive classes into active learning was born.

2014

edX Hackathon prize

Winning an award for Creative Commons Licensing Integration for edX validated our efforts and comforted us in the path we were taking. This was also the year where we reached the milestone of our first 10K users.

2016

Feedbackfruits 2.0

We developed plugins that could e integrated into any LMS. That not only made universities more open to our solution but also ensured we could encourage active learning at scale.

With the launch of FeedbackFruits 2.0, we also revised our business model. FeedbackFruits created the EdTech DoTank from the idea that education needs to be shaped with the help of educational experts.

2018

the year of adventure

We love adventure. We internationalized the company in the US and Australia and opened our 2nd office in Boston.

2020

The year of online learning

In one year, our user base increased by 180%: from 50K to 140K.
With the global COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions realized that online learning provides opportunities to ensure educational continuity for students, to leverage technology in order to reduce the burden on teachers, and to use improved pedagogies, better suited for maintaining student engagement.

2013

feedbackfruits 1.0

Soon after, FeedbackFruits entered the incubator YES!Delft for 4 years and created its 1st platform. Unlike the previous app, FeedbackFruits 1.0 was facilitating flipped learning by making study material interactive.

After the first prototype was built, Wageningen University and Hogeschool van Amsterdam joined us as partners.

2015

20K active students on our platform

One year later, we doubled the number of users on our platform – another milestone.

2017

A student-centered company

At FeedbackFruits, we work hard to create student-oriented products. This approach also applies to our recruitment. We value the importance of internships and give interns the opportunity to grow and reach their full potential. In fact, over 3/4 of our full-time team members started as interns!

As our team grew, our numbers of partners increased too, In only 5 years, 80% of Dutch universities were using FeedbackFruits tools. This not only raised the stakes but also set the ground for the new phase of FeedbackFruits' growth internationally.

2019

3rd Inspiration Day

Innovations can feel lonely sometimes...
Which is why, since 2017, we have been organizing the Inspiration Day event for the front-runner innovators, where they share their best practices with instructors and instructional designers of the DoTank institutions.

Today

What does the future hold?

We are working hard to provide pedagogical tools that help teachers to not only convey knowledge in their courses, but improve students' higher order skills through active participation and organized feedback. Somewhere in the world there are students, teachers, and educational professionals giving their best. For them, our goal is to make every course in the world engaging in the near future.

More than anything, we stay true to ourselves

FeedbackFruits isn’t just changing education. We’re on a mission to create an environment for people to stay true to themselves. What does changing education have to do with staying true to yourself? Here are three stories that explain it.

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Ewoud’s journey and the idea behind FeedbackFruits began at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. As a student member of the Dutch national accreditation committee, Ewoud’s vision was to change the way education is designed, by increasing interactivity and collaboration in course design. Ewoud co-founded FeedbackFruits in 2012, which grew to global success in the years after. Today, he continues to lead an international team of over 60 employees under the mission of transforming education by making every course engaging.

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Ewoud left on parental leave for 2 months. He completely disconnected and had no contact with FeedbackFruits. When he came back, the first thing he thought was “I am not needed anymore”.While this could be an enthusiasm breaker, Ewoud realized the importance of trust.By granting trust and freedom, you let people take over responsibilities which will lead them to reach their fullest potential. This is where unconditional trust became the core value of FeedbackFruits. Creating the environment for people to feel safe to make decisions and mistakes is creating the space for people to stay true to themselves.As a leader, your main role is to defend the space for others to grow and stay true to themselves.

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As an instructor as well as a researcher, you only have so much time in a week. The instructors that care for their courses give up some of their time for doing research (or at least their focus as a lot of these hero's time is spent at night). Many remarkable instructors whose visions were championed by the education department, are not understood by their research-only colleges. They sometimes miss a promotion or even get fired. At FeedbackFruits, we believe that the priority given to teachers and course designs should be restored. By developing people through education, teachers are helping our society to thrive. We want to allow teachers to create the space for students to thrive and learn.