How Cogniate built an investor-ready course-creation MVP with AppGenie
To support fundraising with a working product, Cogniate partnered with AppGenie to build an investor-ready MVP that demonstrates end-to-end AI course creation while baking in content ownership and security foundations from day one.
Industry
EdTech
Country
Australia
Company Type
Startup
The Partner
Cogniate is an AI-powered course creation platform for educators and L&D teams, designed to help course creators build engaging learning experiences in minutes, not weeks, with the ability to create once and publish everywhere. The product positions itself around education-specific AI and a non-technical authoring experience—allowing creators to generate structured curriculum and then assemble courses using interactive building blocks with a drag-and-drop interface.
The Challenge
Cogniate needed a fundraising-grade MVP that proved the product's core value quickly, while setting the right foundations for enterprise trust.
- Build an investor-ready MVP fast: The fundraising narrative required a working demo that showed real product capability, not concepts.
- Prove the core workflow end-to-end: The MVP needed to demonstrate course parameter definition, AI generation, component-based building, and "export anywhere."
- Establish trust and governance early: Cogniate's positioning includes human review, content ownership, strong security controls, and education/privacy-aligned compliance principles — these needed to be reflected in the MVP build decisions.
The AppGenie Solution
AppGenie delivered the MVP through a focused 4-engineer product engineer team, operating in short sprint cycles with weekly demos to keep the fundraising timeline and product story tightly aligned.
The Team
- Tech Lead — architecture, delivery quality, release ownership
- AI/LLM Engineer (Senior) — generation workflow, prompt/pipeline design, evaluation loop
- Frontend Engineer (Senior) — drag-and-drop builder, UX, and performance
- Backend/Platform Engineer (Senior) — APIs, course data model, export pipeline, authentication
What AppGenie Delivered
- Define course parameters (level, teaching style, source options) so the product can generate structured course content aligned to intent.
- Support multiple content source options (including OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Gemini, and textbooks) to reflect flexibility in generation inputs.
- Drag-and-drop course builder to assemble interactive experiences from a component library.
- Publish/export foundation to align with "export anywhere" positioning and an API-driven integration direction.
- Governance and quality guardrails reflecting the product's stance: AI content marked for human review; emphasis on pedagogical best practices and verified sources.
- Security baseline aligned to the platform messaging: enterprise-grade security, end-to-end encryption, strict access controls, and strict customer data isolation.
- IP and data policy alignment: users retain 100% ownership; content is not used to train the AI without permission.
How AppGenie Integrated
- Delivery cadence: 2-week sprints with weekly stakeholder demos (fundraising-ready iteration).
- Execution posture: MVP-first, proof-driven development: each sprint shipped a demoable workflow progress tied directly to Cogniate's public positioning ("minutes, not weeks," interactive components, export).
Key Features Delivered
- AI Course Generation (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini)
- Drag-and-Drop Builder
- Export/Publish Foundation
- Content Ownership & Security
The Outcome
With the AppGenie pre-vetted engineers, Cogniate achieved a fundraising-oriented MVP that demonstrated differentiated product value and "trust foundations" in a single narrative.
- An investor-ready product demo covering the core flow: define parameters → generate curriculum → build with drag-and-drop components → publish/export.
- A credible trust posture for early conversations, aligned to Cogniate's public commitments on ownership, AI training permissions, encryption/access controls, and customer data isolation.
- A platform story consistent with target users (educators, course creators, L&D teams) and an early-access funnel to capture interest.
"The MVP needed to show the full loop, from generation to interactive building to export, while keeping governance and security investor-grade."
— Trinh Le (Backend/Platform Engineer)