It all started with a Christmas gift in 2021 when Jared Ebersole gave his nephew an electric skateboard, took it apart and turned it into an engineering lesson.
After seeing his nephew’s excitement as he explained how the motors, gears, and batteries work together, the idea of Lectec — educational electric vehicle kits — was born.
Jared decided to go all in and realized he would need more hands on deck. Luke St Amand, his best friend from college, jumped in to help out. The duo started small, attending trade shows and developing their initial curriculum.
Soon Luke made a bold decision - leaving his dream job as an Engineer at Amazon to go all-in on Lectec.
"It wasn't about sacrificing a stable career; it was about believing in something bigger - inspiring the next generation of engineers." - Luke St. Amand, Co-founder at Lectec
By the summer of 2022, Lectec had its first prototypes ready for testing. They started with 30 local families, watching parents and kids build the kits together. But the real breakthrough came when they spent a year in a Long Island high school, where they realized something important.
"The students loved the kits, and so did the teachers. However, to be in a classroom, the kits needed to fit curriculum requirements. We realized we needed an educational experience that was amazing from end-to-end, something like an academy." - Luke St. Amand, Co-founder at Lectec
In addition, the team was already developing a partnership contract that required Lectec’s educational platform to be ready within two months.
To build the Lectec Academy and meet the deadline, Luke needed to find the right learning management system (LMS): one that is easy to learn and customizable enough to fit their needs.
Luke started exploring different learning management systems and their features.
“I was struggling to find the right solution. The existing LMS solutions were far too rigid for our needs, with minimal customization options.” - Luke St. Amand, Co-founder at Lectec
He decided to build their own LMS from scratch, a serious challenge given his two-month deadline and lack of app building experience.
Initially, Luke wanted to use AWS since he knew the products, and had connections there. It seemed like an obvious choice. But after a couple of weeks of trying to teach himself JavaScript and React, reality set in.
"I realized there was no way I could learn to code good enough to build a decent app from scratch in just eight weeks." -Luke St. Amand, Co-founder at Lectec
Jared encouraged Luke to turn to no-code/low-code solutions and pointed him to WeWeb and Xano.
For Luke, these tools were a game-changer.
He used existing templates as a starting point. This allowed him to reverse engineer the components he needed and customize them to Lectec’s specific requirements instead of starting from scratch.
"The most important part was having templates to work from. Starting from a blank canvas would be daunting. With templates, I could take something existing and customize it to what we needed." - Luke St Amand, Co-founder at Lectec
Thanks to WeWeb's plugin, the integration between the two tools was seamless. In addition, the visual interface of Xano made complex concepts like user management and authentication easier to grasp.
Although he had no previous experience with app development, WeWeb Academy, extensive documentation and video tutorials were crucial in helping him get up to speed. And every time he got stuck, he would jump on office hours to ask questions and get help from the WeWeb team.
“I had no experience with frontend development or building web apps. At the time, I didn’t even know what an API is and I was struggling to understand collections. WeWeb Academy, documentation, and office hours with Flo and Joyce provided invaluable support.” - Luke St. Amand, Co-founder at Lectec
Luke met his deadline and Lectec Academy was officially released on February 21, 2024.
Today, Lectec has grown from a dorm room project to a startup that's empowering over 15,000 students with DIY electric vehicle kits. They even landed a spot on Shark Tank - selected from over 10,000 applications!
The team isn't slowing down. They're planning to expand their product line to include electric bikes and scooters, and they're working on adding some cutting-edge features using Raspberry Pi modules for real-time data and AI capabilities.
“We're getting a lot of feedback to start creating electric bike kits, so that'll probably be next. And of course, we need to continue improving Lectec Academy.” - Luke St Amand, Co-founder at Lectec
What advice does Luke have for those with a big idea wanting to turn it into reality?
“Get on the no-code train. With WeWeb & Xano you can cut down development time exponentially and launch your app faster. Just jump into it. You'll be surprised how much you're able to do." - Luke St. Amand, Co-founder at Lectec
He also emphasized the importance of partnership.
"You've got to pick the right partner. Doing it alone is just not fun. Having somebody there - especially if it's your best friend - makes all the difference. The right combination of vision, partnership, and no-code tools can quickly turn a simple idea into a successful venture." - Luke St. Amand, Co-founder at Lectec
