Our education system has stayed pretty much the same as it was two hundred years ago. This is not a bad thing, considering that there are only a small amount of proven ways to actively engage student’s learning abilities. As technology advances, educators are now trying new techniques to improve the ways that students learn in the classroom. With this increase in technology, students are finding it easier to memorize terms and concepts thanks mostly to one of the fastest growing education sites in the world, Quizlet. Quizlet was founded by Andrew Sutherland in 2007 when he was 22 to be a resource to help student study for test and exams. His initial idea for Quizlet came when he was 15 when he created a platform to help him for a quiz. Since then, it has grown to be one of the top 100 sites used around the world. Not only does the company bring in over $10 million per year, it has seen exponential expanses in its user base year over year with a 2 million user increase every month.
Sutherland’s story is one that many young entrepreneurs seem to face. By creating something that either a small group of people want or that they are passionate about, they realize that they can turn their idea into a large business. After creating Quizlet in high school, Sutherland saw its success and made the difficult decision to drop out of MIT in order to grow the business into what it is today. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to do both well,” he says. “I saw how big Quizlet was getting, how many people were using it and how big an impact it could have for millions of students.” Not only does the platform target students like it did back in 2007 at launch, it has introduced teacher tools that can be accessed through various subscription models. Sutherland’s willingness to bring an idea that he had into reality has created him overwhelming amounts of success and the difficult choices that he has made throughout his life continue to drive him to make Quizlet the best platform it can be.
Sources:
www.studybreaks.com/college/talking-andrew-sutherland-founder-quizlet/
www.mogulpedia.com/person/andrew-sutherland/
I think that many students will agree with me when I say that Quizlet has been a savior to me many times. The format of the site is genius and Sutherland really has a good business idea with this. The way you can make and share flash cards and all the activities that you can do to learn your material is something that is unmatched by any other online studying site. I use Quizlet as a way to study for most of my tests and quizzes. It’s interesting how a lot of great ideas and big businesses start off as something small with a person trying to solve a problem they have or witness and they never realize how much it could take off. Quizlet is a great example of this.
You bring up an interesting point that many ideas come from a personal need or a need of only a very few people. I think many businesses are started that way. By that same token, many people don’t develop their idea or start their business because they don’t think that anyone but themselves will want their product. I use Quizlet almost on a daily basis and I think it was a great idea to take traditional index card flash cards and create a digital platform around that concept.
I feel like people thing the same way about Quizlet that they do about Facebook. It seems like such a simple concept that anyone could have made it, and has become wildly successful due to the need it fills. It has changed the way people study by making the individuals feel as though they are making progress and offering different methods of studying, along with other things. It is a simple concept that has earned the usage it is currently garnering per month.
Quizlet is awesome! I use it for all of my exams and it helps tremendously! Sutherland designed it really well because it is so easy to use and I have not come across another website to help students studying like Quizlet does. It is cool to hear how he came up with the initial idea in high school and how he has grown it to $10 billion per year in revenue. My teachers in high school used the teachers feature on Quizlet and they loved it and was super easy to use for review games and part of students studying for their tests/quizzes.
I love this story because it shows someone that wants to create a community of learning and allow people to collaborate with their studying and learning. I love that he saw the problem that many people didn’t know existed. He solved and people finally saw how big of a problem it was.