From investment banking to entrepreneurship, Cristy Almeida discusses her journey to starting Bizibuz, a platform that helps parents manage their children’s lives while easing their own, and how conviction, adaptability and mentorship have aided her along the way
With a career in finance that spans 17 years, four investment banks and four different continents, Cristy Almeida might not seem like the typical start-up type, but the mother of two is currently changing the face of education—and female entrepreneurship—in Hong Kong as the founder and CEO of Bizibuz.
“As a working mom, I found it very tedious to be managing my daily work, which was already very demanding, and the educational development of two kids,” says Almeida, an ex-Goldman Sachs executive who used to spend her weekends building spreadsheets to juggle the administrative aspect of managing her kids’ after-school activities.
Due to the fragmented nature of the supplementary education market in Hong Kong, most educational centres needed to be contacted and booked separately with different course offerings, schedules and payment methods. They also often lacked official websites, online bookings, reviews or the ability to accept credit cards, resulting in an administrative nightmare for parents, especially those with multiple children. Enter Bizibuz.
Trading tools
Almeida's Bizibuz is a ‘smart hive for kids’ activities’ in Hong Kong with more than 1,000 educational centres and over 800,000 courses on the platform that can be booked, scheduled, paid for (and even cancelled) at the click of a button. From sports, languages, music and art to exam prep, STEM and foundational life skills, the intuitive, all-in-one platform has become an invaluable tool for parents to manage their kids’ extracurricular activities and supplementary education.
Bizibuz also provides recommendations for parents on the activities that are best suited for their kids aged three to 18 with their proprietary KnowYourChild™ tools, which were created in partnership with academics and practitioners from local educational institutions including the Education University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Chinese International School and Canadian International School.
The AI-enabled tools provide tracking and feedback on the children’s early childhood development, academic and non-academic performance across different subject matters, and can even match their personalities, abilities and interests to a suggested career path.
Interestingly, the inspiration for Bizibuz and KnowYourChild™ actually came from Almeida’s role as a trader at Goldman Sachs. “I was in a technical role, so I’d come in contact with algorithmic trading and data analytics, and I realised that those same tools could be put to use in a different context.”
When the pandemic hit in 2020, many schools were forced to pivot to online learning, creating both a gap and opportunity for kids’ extra-curricular activities. “Supplementary education became even more critical during Covid, as did the focus on parents being the decision makers of our kids' overall education,” says Almeida. “All of these factors combined gave me the conviction and confidence to launch Bizibuz.”
Risky business
While it may have seemed risky to leave behind a stable career in investment banking to launch a start-up in supplementary education—during Covid, no less—Almeida was unfazed and no stranger to hard work.
“I came from investment banking and places like Goldman Sachs where I’d often pull all-nighters, but in some respects, running your own company is even more challenging,” she says. “With your own business, you have absolutely no divide between work and life, and it can be quite intense 24/7, particularly with an e-commerce business.”
Things can be especially tough as a female entrepreneur. “Running a business really takes everything—time, energy and focus—so, if you’re starting a company and having to juggle a role that may have more family responsibilities, it can be hard to manage both at the same time.
“Women are often the ones who face the burden of managing the kids and their activities, which was definitely the case for me,” she adds. “That’s what led to the desire to reduce the frictions for other parents, but predominantly other women who face these burdens.”
Almeida’s hard work is paying off as Bizibuz grows to over 130,000 users (mainly mothers), but she admits that work-life balance is still a struggle. “I’m terrible at it—I don’t sleep a lot, I work very hard and I love what I do. I think if you’re passionate about what you’re trying to achieve, it gives you the motivation to do whatever is necessary.
“Everyone says that the hardest years of starting a company are the early years, which is probably similar to raising a child,” she continues. “Although, I’m not sure what that means when it comes to teenage years…I’m hoping that’s where the analogy dies!”
As a mother of two, Almeida’s passion for supplementary education stems from her own childhood as the daughter of a maths teacher and university professor in her native Australia.
“We couldn’t afford a lot of after-school activities or private school [back then], but the advantages that I did get were when my parents sat down with me and supplemented my education as private tutors.”
Wanting to give her children the same benefits, she made sure to enrol them in plenty of extracurricular activities from a young age. Currently, her son, nine, is learning two languages (Japanese and Mandarin) and two instruments (piano and cello), while her daughter, 11, is also learning two languages (French and Mandarin) and one instrument (violin).