At age 20, William Zhou received inspiration for Chalk.com as he observed the administrative workload from his own high school teachers.  He noticed that teachers are overwhelmed with tasks such as lesson planning, assessment, and evaluation   Zhou created Planboard to help teachers plan their lessons easier. Planboard received $25,000 from the University of Waterloo Velocity Venture Fund in 2012.  By mid-2013, Planboard had gained significant users.  In 2014, Chalk.com, the parent company of Planboard, expanded into assessment tools. Today, Chalk.com is used in over 20,000 schools and has over 100,000 teachers.

Chalk.com is like Microsoft Office for teachers. It’s a suite of productivity apps for K-12 educators. Used in over 20,000 schools worldwide, Chalk.com solves the problems of lesson planning, assessment, and collaboration and eases teachers’ pain by facilitating personalized education and driving student success.

William Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Chalk.com, observes, “I had always thought that teaching is an easy job. I thought teachers taught from a textbook and got 3 months off in a year. It wasn’t until I visited my own high school teachers that I realized it’s not the case. They were struggling with an overwhelming amount of work, dealing with lesson planning, assessment, and attendance, in addition to fending off angry parents and bureaucratic administration. I told them I couldn’t help them with the latter two but I could help ease their daily tasks. That’s when I started Chalk.com.”