The company Scholarcy is an AI ed-tech company that helps students organize, prioritize, and summarize their school readings. The platform uses AI technology to read readings and identify important points, ideas, or information. So, instead of students reading full texts, they only need to read the summary. On their website, they claim that time spent reading is reduced by 70%.
While this type of technology might not appeal to teachers, especially to those encouraging students to read the full text, this is the type of technology that students would use. Meaning, that it might not align with the morals of most teachers but it’s certainly a product that students would use and likely pay for.
Scholarcy took part in a pitch competition with several other ed-tech start-ups, so if you’re interested in seeing what other ed-tech companies might be pitching, I suggest skimming through the rest of the video. In the pitch, they initially define the problem, then offer a solution, and then a description of how it works/their process to “5 steps to faster learning”.
After watching the video, I gave this site a try. It seems to work really well with large and dense sites like Wikipedia. I am about to teach about Napoleon so I thought I’d try it out and see what it could produce. I was very impressed with the possibilities, from a tweet style response to various ways to condense a lot of information on the ruler. The flashcard generator is a great new feature that assists the user in studying. It’s a shame that this isn’t a fully free product, but it clearly serves a purpose. I do wonder if it is unique enough to stand out in the already overrun AI education tool market. As a teacher that knows that his students aren’t reading as it stands, this is a great alternative to ChatGPT as you are still digesting information and picking and choosing what you feel is worthy to highlight. Thanks for bringing this site to our attention, Helena.
I would invest in this business
1. CEO and Team: The creators experienced the same pain point that a lot students experience which is the inability to effectively read assigned text in courses.
2. Venture concept: The product not only targets students. It can also target policy researchers, librarians, and journalists. It’s a useful tool to help get the job done easier.
3. Marketability: This will get a lot of students on board. Reading assigned text is a major pain point. With producing summaries, re reading the text could be easier as the student would roughly know what’s going on.
4. Venture Plan: This part needs to be developed. An investor needs to know market readiness, exit strategy, and investor affinity.