Dubai-based entrepreneur Dan Nachmias has launched Elysian Minds, an AI-powered education platform aimed at teaching children entrepreneurship and life skills from the age of seven, with the company now on a path towards a $1 billion valuation.
The platform is designed for children aged between 7 and 12 and combines curriculum-aligned academics with financial literacy, emotional intelligence and entrepreneurial thinking. Elysian Minds also covers kidpreneurship, health and nutrition, with the company targeting families, homeschoolers and globally mobile parents.
The business was created following a personal experience that changed how Nachmias viewed education and the skills children should learn at an early age. The serial entrepreneur suffered a heart attack but recovered within days, with the experience prompting him to think about the future he was building for his son, Kenzo.
According to Nachmias, it took him until his thirties and forties, as well as more than $1 million spent on personal development, to learn how to manage money, deal with his emotions, believe in himself and keep going when things became difficult. He said these were skills he had not been taught at school and that he did not want his son, or other children, to have to wait until adulthood to develop them.
That experience became the foundation for Elysian Minds, which aims to introduce entrepreneurial and life-skills education at the age of seven rather than waiting until later in life. The company says it wants to address what it sees as a gap between when children develop habits around money and patience and when entrepreneurial education is normally introduced.
Research cited by Elysian Minds from MIT, Northwestern University and the US Census Bureau puts the average age of a founder behind a high-growth startup at 45. Separate research from the University of Cambridge, commissioned by the UK’s Money Advice Service, found that children’s habits around money and patience are largely established by the age of seven.
Elysian Minds says its approach is designed to close that gap by introducing entrepreneurial thinking and life skills while children are still developing those habits. The platform uses artificial intelligence and gamification alongside its educational content, while traditional academic subjects remain part of the programme.
Nachmias said the company’s mission is to create one million “happy, healthy, confident entrepreneur kids”. He added that building Elysian Minds into a $1 billion company was not the objective for its own sake, but represented the scale he believes would be needed to reach that number of children.
The company is headquartered in Dubai and is positioning its offering around skills it says are often missing from traditional schooling. Financial literacy, emotional intelligence, entrepreneurial thinking and health and nutrition are combined with curriculum-aligned academics as part of the platform.
Elysian Minds is now aiming to build its education platform around the idea that entrepreneurial thinking can be developed much earlier in life. Rather than waiting until adulthood, the company wants children to begin learning about money, resilience, confidence and independent thinking while they are still developing the habits that can influence their future.
