Khan Academy
Nov 16th, 2010 by palimarrao
Khan Academy is an epitome of pursuit of excellence. Just imagine, if you have a calculus exam the next day and you want more tutoring in optimization, what would be your best option:
A) rush to your friend’s house for help
B) get help online from the comfort of your home
Obviously, it is option B that is more preferable to people. Khan Academy then, is your best solution. Choose from over 2000 free, easy to use instructional videos all taught by a HBS grad- Salman Khan. He, like many other entrepreneurs, had an epiphany quite by accident. His enterprise started in the summer of 2004, while still living in Boston. Khan learned that his seventh-grader cousin, Nadia, in New Orleans was having trouble in math class converting kilograms. So, he agreed to remotely tutor her. Using Yahoo Doodle software as a shared notepad, as well as a telephone the blueprint of Khan Academy was put in place.
Soon this news spread and more distant relatives started asking for help. Since they had a problem scheduling meeting times, he decided to post his explanations of matter on Youtube. This became pretty successful, and like a successful entrepreneur, Khan realised the potential in this idea. He persevered and soon the Khan Academy was born. He was bootstrapping for a while, but in 2009, he left his job in finance after being overwhelmed by the positive response to the Academy and devoted himself completely to it.
Khan Academy since then, has only seen success. Among its fans are Bill Gates and his son who often refer to this website to get information. Truly, Khan Academy is an entrepreneurial wonder that attracted new markets and broke away from the convention of classroom lectures.
Recently, Google announced that it would be providing $2 million to support the Khan Academy. Apart from this, many other $10,000 contributions were made to Khan Academy.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/23/technology/sal_khan_academy.fortune/index.htm