Teacher's AI Platform Success

A story about how a teacher created Magic School, an AI platform for educators, during COVID and achieved massive success.

"Magic School is an AI application for educators - it helps them use foundation models and LLMs to do their work, create assignments for kids, and provide interactive AI experiences. The creator was a teacher who took time during COVID to learn how to code. He and another person built the initial version entirely on Replit.

The platform immediately started growing virally without much marketing. It solved a major pain point - teachers spend a lot of time after school grading papers, creating lesson plans, making quizzes and multiple choice tests. While previously teachers might buy materials from other teachers for $9 on platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers, Magic School lets them generate everything automatically. They just say something like 'I teach 5th grade biology and want a pop quiz about how mitosis works' and it creates the materials they need.

The growth has been incredible - they've reached over 4 million educators and their students, raised $20 million, and launched just over a year ago in July 2023. The revenue ramp was one of the craziest I've seen, especially for education. This is particularly notable because selling to schools and teachers was historically considered one of the hardest things to do - they're overworked, underpaid, and typically don't have time to learn new tools."