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/
As a homeschooler, Natalie and her family had to buy all of their books themselves, and as there was no curated or organized way to buy used book, they usually ended up buying these books new from publishers, which got very expensive. However, Natalie noticed that after he finished with a book, it just stayed on her bookshelf until it either was given away to a family friend or sold at a significantly reduced price at a yard sale. Natalie considered how wasteful this was, both on the buying end and the reselling end because there was no organized platform for homeschoolers to interact with each other in this manner. Out of this pain came her idea of Hoot Book Revival, which is an app and website on which homeschoolers can resell their books and buy used books from other homeschooling families at a reduced cost. This benefits both the buyer and the seller, because people looking to buy books can get them much cheaper than they can new books, and people looking to sell books can sell them for more than they could at a yard sale.
When I asked Natalie about how this business came about and what need it was filling, she said, “I suppose the core of the business idea was identifying an underrepresented group, and how their market needs weren’t being addressed, because the business pitch itself is pretty simple.” Natalie’s website allows the customer to buy and sell books, as well as collaborate with other homeschoolers on which lesson plans and books are best. Hoot Book Revival also has an option where people can post their books and let Hoot do all the work in finding people to sell them to, making the customer experience more enjoyable and less labor intensive.