adaptive-learning
(11)
Jeff Scheur Graded 15,000 Papers. Then He Rebuilt the Feedback Loop.
A Chicago English teacher turned a 2 a.m. grading ritual into NoRedInk. His enduring idea is disarmingly practical: software should give students room to practice and give teachers more time to teach.
Kunaal Satija Is Building the Study Habit That Fits in a Pocket
The EduRev founder started with second-hand books, learned the limits of selling software one school at a time, and built a learning platform around a stubborn idea: useful education should travel farther than a good teacher can.
Arpit Jain Bet the iPad Could Make Learning Feel Like Play
His first education startup was early. His second began with four classmates, a new tablet, and a stubborn question: what if children could practise hard things without learning to fear them?
He Built a Parenting App for the Question No Spreadsheet Could Answer
Gustavo Rodriguez knew how to read a deal. Becoming a father taught him that the harder problem was turning a mountain of child-development research into one useful thing a tired parent could do next.
Abdulhamid Haidar
Abdulhamid Haidar is the founder and CEO of Darsel, a nonprofit that teaches K-12 math over text messages. Instead of apps and video that assume reliable Wi-Fi, Darsel runs entirely on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and SMS, using AI-powered adaptive algorithms to tutor students in Jordan, India and Nigeria. Built during the 2020 COVID lockdown by a Syrian-American who grew up in a family of teachers, Darsel has had more than 120,000 students answer over 170 million math questions. Haidar holds degrees from MIT, Harvard Kennedy School and Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and previously spent three years at McKinsey. His goal: meaningfully reach 100 million students by 2030.
Scott Lee
Scott Lee is the founder and CEO of Gooroo, a New York based education technology company building an AI-driven platform that matches students with the right tutor and bundles online courses, clubs and progress tracking under one roof. Born in Seoul and arriving in the US at 16 without speaking English, he leaned on tutors and mentors to find his footing, studied engineering at Columbia, paused to serve as a sergeant in the South Korean army, and worked as an analyst in JP Morgan's Chief Investment Office before going all in on education. He has raised more than $8 million and serves thousands of students worldwide, with a stated mission to make quality, personalized learning accessible to everyone.
Todd Zipper
Todd Zipper is a longtime education-and-technology operator now running Axio Education, a Scottsdale-based agentic AI learning platform that turns static coursework into adaptive, personalized pathways. Before Axio he spent more than two decades building and scaling online-education businesses: he led The Learning House to its 2018 sale to Wiley, then ran Wiley's global education and talent operations as an executive vice president overseeing more than $300 million in annual revenue. He hosts the higher-ed podcast An Educated Guest and holds a CFA charter alongside degrees from Penn and Columbia.
Diego Villegas
Diego Villegas is the co-founder and CEO of Slang, an MIT-born edtech startup that uses machine learning and NLP to teach industry-specific professional English to the global workforce. A serial entrepreneur, he first built MASA, a Colombian oil-and-gas technical-services firm that grew to roughly $200M in revenue and 5,000+ employees before its acquisition by Stork. The pain of watching capable employees stall - and get laid off - for lack of business English became the seed of Slang, which now offers 150+ career-focused courses to companies including Nestle, Banco Santander, and Hyatt across more than a dozen countries.
Sophie Novati
Sophie Novati is the CEO and co-founder of Formation, an A16Z-backed engineering fellowship that helps underrepresented software engineers break into top-tier tech companies. A Carnegie Mellon computer science graduate who rose to staff engineer at Facebook and Nextdoor, she founded Formation in 2019 after recognizing that talented engineers from non-traditional backgrounds were being systematically excluded from elite tech roles. Formation pairs adaptive AI-driven learning with mentorship from senior engineers, and its graduates have landed roles at Meta, Google, Netflix, Amazon, and Dropbox, with an average first-year compensation increase of over $100,000. The company has raised $9 million in funding and Novati credits a 2am chess game with Mark Zuckerberg as one early spark for thinking about business models.
Sue Khim
Sue Khim is the CEO and co-founder of Brilliant.org, an interactive STEM learning platform serving over 10 million users in 150+ countries. Born in South Korea and raised in Chicago, she studied mathematics at the University of Chicago before leaving to found Alltuition, a student financial aid startup, in 2009. That team pivoted in 2012 to build Brilliant, which has since raised over $90 million in venture funding and become one of the most widely used platforms for self-paced math and science education. Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in Education and recognized by Apple as an AAPI leader in tech, Khim is focused on replacing rote memorization with genuine conceptual understanding at global scale.
Jiayuan Fang
Dr. Jiayuan Fang is the Founder and CEO of Afficient Academy, a Silicon Valley edtech company that uses patented AI-driven adaptive learning to help K-12 students advance a full grade level in 2-5 months. A former UC Berkeley PhD and electrical engineering professor turned serial entrepreneur, Fang previously founded Sigrity Inc., which was acquired by Cadence Design Systems for approximately $80 million in 2012. His pivot to education was sparked by his own three children's experience with inadequate after-school tutoring - leading him to build a platform that identifies not just what students get wrong, but why.