Quick Comment on YC Demo Day
Educato was part of the Y Combinator Summer 24 batch. This experience truly launched our company so our CEO Codrut answered a few questions about the journey.
What inspired you to start your company, and what problem are you solving?
Online exam prep has been around decades, but most big companies focus only on a few popular exams in the U.S. This leaves a huge gap for other important exams worldwide. Millions of students face exams every eyar with little to no high-quality online prep materials. That's where Educato comes in! We're using AI to create top-notch prep content for these exams that have been overlooked. With advanced language models, we’re able to reach the "long tail" of exams that big education companies have traditionally missed - which is actually the vast majority.
As for why I started Educato, it really ties back to my roots. I come from a family of professors, and I was involved in academic competitions (olympiads) and projects in the education space growing up. This is something I've been passionate about for a long time.
How are you leveraging AI, machine learning, or similar technologies in your product?
Our main focus is on exams that often don’t get enough attention, and recent advancements in AI have made it possible to reach these exams in a meaningful way. We use AI in two big ways:
Content Creation and Enhancement: Our AI processes and improves learning content, making it more accessible and effective for students. Personalized Learning: We tailor each student’s learning path based on their unique needs, so they get the most out of their exam prep.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and where do you see your company fitting in?
The state of education is not a natural state of the world, but a set of technological tools to best teach students. Classrooms with teachers came about in the 17th century as Europe aimed to democratise education. Exams are tools that aim to find the correlation between your score and how good you'll be at a particular job, for example being a doctor or an engineer. Multiple-choice questions were invented in the early 20th century to allow objective grading at scale.
AI advancements allow us to better educate and evaluate students.
Right now, most exams are multiple-choice, but, we expect to see more sophisticated grading systems using AI, including more essays and interviews. For instance, testing future doctors will still require knowledge-based exams, but we’ll also need to assess qualities like empathy and decision making. We see Educato as a leader in not only providing solid prep for current exams but also adapting to these future, AI-enhanced evaluations.
Can you describe a pivotal moment during the YC program that changed the trajectory of your startup?
YC was an incredible journey for us, and one of the standout moments was when we truly embraced Paul Graham’s advice of talking to users. We launched an exam in Peru and, despite the language barrier—us not speaking Spanish and the students not speaking English—we reached out and connected with as many students as we could.