Robert Barakat had two small words in his sights: “thus” and “hence”. In 2015, writing about the culture of his education company, he offered their removal from video scripts as an example of how a business reveals its character. Somewhere in the work of explaining a syllabus, a finger had to reach for the backspace key. The vocabulary of the examination hall could lose a little of its ceremonial dress.
It is a pleasing detail for a founder who studied law. Barakat had spent time with subjects that reward precision and tolerate considerable formality. At Atomi, the company he co-founded with Thomas O’Donahoo, his attention turned towards the person trying to follow an explanation. A lesson could be correct and still sound as though it had arrived wearing the wrong clothes.
His career makes more sense when followed through these practical choices. Tutoring sessions became recorded explanations. A collection of videos became something teachers could build into their classes. The business grew, but the question inside it remained recognisable: what would make this easier for the student to use?
A business within walking distance of school
Barakat and O’Donahoo knew one another at St Aloysius’ College in Sydney, where both belonged to the class of 2009. They discussed business ideas while still at school. Education did not feature in those early conversations. The eventual business came from something much nearer than a grand forecast about the future of technology.
After school, Barakat assembled fellow alumni into SAC Tutoring. They ran holiday sessions for Year 12 students with the school. He and O’Donahoo began considering how recorded videos could extend that work. Tutoring supplied a problem they understood; video offered a way to carry an explanation beyond the appointment that produced it.
One pupil in those workshops, Sergio Badilescu-Buga, later helped make Atomi content. He had finished ninth in the state in English. The progression from attending a holiday session to producing educational material gives the early business a human scale. The next colleague could be someone who had recently sat on the other side of the lesson.
Law books, finance courses, maths videos
Barakat appears on the NSW HSC All Rounders list for 2009. His subsequent education took him through commerce studies at the University of Sydney and into law and applied finance at Macquarie University. His LinkedIn education record describes interests including finance and securities law, taxation and international business. These were fairly substantial subjects to have on the desk while another business was taking shape.
He also worked as a law clerk at Slater & Gordon between November 2010 and January 2012. Atomi’s founding is dated to 2013 by its investor OIF Ventures. The company began during the founders’ university years, with a few instructional maths videos. Its first unit of ambition was an explanation a student could understand.
There is no need to turn that sequence into a sudden rejection of law or finance. The interesting fact is the overlap. A founder trained in those disciplines was building a service around school learning, alongside a partner with a technical background. The company’s later combination of content and software grew out of that partnership.
The lesson before the lesson
Barakat’s writing about flipped learning gives the videos a purpose beyond being available on a screen. Students watch explanations outside class. The teacher then uses classroom time for questions, practice and help. The familiar arrangement of instruction followed by homework changes places, allowing more of the difficult application to happen with someone available to guide it.
His imagined classroom starts with pupils raising their hands before the teacher has begun an explanation. They already have questions. The attraction is the chance to reach a struggling student who might otherwise disappear into a roomful of competing demands. It is a modestly domestic vision of technology: the reward is a better conversation during an ordinary lesson.
For the teacher, preparing all the recordings would be a job in itself. Atomi’s role was to supply curriculum material that made the arrangement practical. The video needed to do enough preparatory work to make the classroom encounter worthwhile. That places a considerable burden on a few minutes of explanation.
A school partnership brought the idea into a working timetable. St John XXIII Catholic College began working with Atomi in 2015. Teachers used its videos alongside Google Classroom, adding their own planning, worksheets and other materials. The resource entered an existing teaching practice, with educators deciding what belonged around it.
That detail matters. A lesson platform meets a school that already has teachers, routines and tools. Its usefulness depends partly on how comfortably it can join them. In the college’s account, videos became preparation for class, while time together focused on understanding. The school retained the work of teaching.
Clarity has a colour palette
Words were only one part of Barakat’s interest in presentation. In a 2016 article about colour, he described how new Atomi colleagues were introduced to a framework called BECM: biology, engagement, categorisation and memory. He argued that colour deserved a continuing place in education as students moved beyond primary school.
The useful biographical detail is the induction itself. Someone joining the company would encounter an explanation of why a visual choice belonged in a lesson. Presentation had a job to do. Colour could help organise material and direct attention; a page or video was something to design deliberately.
Read alongside his attention to scripts, this becomes a picture of how Barakat thought about the product. The wording, the visual treatment and the experience of navigating a lesson all formed part of the encounter with a learner. The decorations had been given homework.
“People relate to people, and if your brand feels like ‘people,’ they’ll relate to you too.”
Robert Barakat, 2015
A million lessons, then a harder question
By 2017, the small maths-video beginning had become a broader HSC resource business. Barakat and O’Donahoo were jointly included in The Educator’s Hot List. At that point, Atomi had delivered more than a million lessons to over 60,000 students, and more than 5,000 teachers across New South Wales had used its videos.
Those figures belong to that moment in the company’s history. Another development that year was less suited to a large numeral: the founders brought experienced teachers, curriculum writers and HSC markers into a senior review team. Content producers now had another layer of educational scrutiny around their work.
Historical figures reported when the founders joined The Educator’s Hot List.
Growth gives an explanation more chances to be useful. It also gives an error more chances to travel. The review work belonged to the same task as making lessons approachable: a resource has to deserve the trust that its tone invites. A friendly voice still has to know the subject.
Nine million dollars, with a reading list
In December 2021, Atomi announced an A$9 million Series A led by OIF Ventures. Barakat’s account organised the news around what the investment would enable: supporting more schools, expanding content and continuing to develop the platform. There were more subjects and year groups to cover, and more lessons, quizzes and practice sessions to make.
The company was serving students and teachers in Australia and the UK. It had expanded from video into tailored insights, revision sessions and recommendations. The investment announcement therefore described a larger responsibility than adding recordings to a library. The company was building more of the experience around what happened after somebody watched.
OIF’s investment account described complementary founders, with Barakat bringing an entrepreneurial approach and O’Donahoo technical ability. It also reported that Atomi had added more schools during 2021 than in the previous three years combined. By April 2022, the founders were sitting down with OIF colleagues for a team discussion about funding and mentorship. Investment had become another working relationship to learn from.
The teacher still has the keys
In his 2022 remarks about classroom technology, Barakat returned to the people expected to use it. Teachers needed training and confidence with new tools. He also discussed the responsibility that accompanied collecting information about students, including how it was stored and used. Greater capability brought more work to earn trust.
Today, Atomi’s leadership pages identify Barakat and O’Donahoo as co-founders and co-CEOs. A recent Brisbane panel put Barakat alongside QUT education lecturer Julie Arnold and Woodcrest State College executive principal Tony McCormack. The discussion ranged across technology, assessment, equity and teacher workload, with attention to whether adoption was producing meaningful learning.
That is a demanding place for an education founder to end up. Usage supplies a number; understanding requires closer attention. Barakat’s public work keeps arriving at the details between them: a teacher’s preparation, a student’s next question, a resource that fits the lesson.
The early edit still belongs in this story. Take out a word that gets in the way. Give the explanation a clearer shape. Leave a little more room for the person trying to understand it. There is enough work in that brief to occupy a company for years.