When we started Pebble Education, it was just a few of us sharing ideas in classrooms and community spaces. Every club launch, every course, every hackathon was built around the same idea: learning should be personal, purposeful, and people-led.

Now, we’re growing fast. More students, more chapters, more schools. That’s exciting—and it’s also where things can go wrong if we’re not careful.

Growth brings scale. But it also risks sameness. You start making decisions for efficiency instead of impact. You replace personal stories with stats. You build for “everyone” and connect with no one.

We don’t want that.

So we’ve made a few quiet choices to hold onto the things that matter. We don’t push top-down agendas on clubs. Each chapter decides how to teach, what to build, and when to run events. Our role is to support, not script.

We still read every message from students who used our tools. If someone tells us a lesson was confusing, we fix it. If they say a project helped them get an internship, we share it with the team. These moments help us stay grounded.

We also keep showing up in person—at school meetings, showcases, and club check-ins. It’s slower, but it reminds us why we started: real learning needs real connection.

Yes, we want to reach more schools. But not at the cost of our values. If we have to choose between fast growth and deep impact, we’ll choose the second every time.

That’s how we scale without losing soul.

— Arnav Bonigala