Joe Philleo, the co-founder and CEO of Edia, leads the event of an AI-powered math platform designed for teachers and students, aiming to enhance outcomes on state exams. The platform operates on the assumption that education plays an important role in shaping individuals’ life trajectories. Edia’s mission is to create technology that ensures every student has access to an exceptional educational experience.
Currently, Edia collaborates with over 100 school districts across america, including distinguished ones resembling Fulton County, Loudoun County, and Palm Beach. These partnerships have demonstrated measurable success, with annual improvements in state math exam performance starting from lower than 2% to as much as 5-12%.
You made the daring decision to drop out of USC to work with Joe Lonsdale at 8VC, gaining exposure to groundbreaking tech projects. What were a few of these projects?
Working with Joe Lonsdale at 8VC was an incredible opportunity. I left school once I was 20 years old to affix his team, and it was my first exposure to Silicon Valley. Working in enterprise capital seems like living in the long run—I met loads of very smart individuals who were constructing self-driving cars, AI doctors, VR glasses, and recent software systems to dramatically improve industry.
I spent loads of time focused on defense, government, and education. I learned so much. My biggest lesson from 8VC was the demystification of Silicon Valley. I grew up in Indiana, distant from any of these items. But spending time with Joe Lonsdale and other great entrepreneurs and investors made me understand that I could also make progress on solving big problems.
You’ve mentioned feeling disenchanted that few top Silicon Valley teams were focused on K-12 education, which led you to begin Edia in 2020. What specifically motivated you to tackle this gap within the education sector, and why did you’re feeling the timing was right to launch Edia?
School has all the time been a private obsession for me. I had three incredible teachers growing up who modified the trajectory of my life, and I also had some very bad experiences with teachers that pulled me in the opposite direction. Early on, I experimented with different ideas for a way we could improve school. In eleventh grade, I made an internet site called “booksarelong.com” to crowdsource AP textbook notes, and in college my friend and I applied Google’s PageRank algorithm to Wikipedia to construct microcourses for all of human knowledge.
The true turning point got here in 2020. Before then, only 10% of scholars in america had their very own school-issued device, which severely limited how teachers and schools could use technology of their classrooms. Then, almost overnight, we went from 10% to 90% of scholars having devices due to Covid-19 pandemic. In June 2020, OpenAI launched GPT-3, and it was clear that this was the moment to construct something that might shape K-12 education.
What were the initial challenges you and your team faced when constructing Edia? How did you overcome them?
From the start, our team has been led by incredible engineers and designers. So, constructing our breakthrough math product wasn’t easy, but it surely also wasn’t the toughest part. As outsiders to the space, it took us a protracted time to differentiate our breakthrough AI math solution from legacy products that made big claims but rarely delivered. We felt that we had to differentiate Edia by showing real impact, which led us to ensure growth for districts that use Edia—i.e. in the event that they don’t see measurable results inside one 12 months of implementing, we provide a full refund. That promise has been a game-changer for constructing trust.
Are you able to explain how Edia’s AI math coaching works to offer real-time, personalized feedback for college kids?
Certainly one of the surprising things we realized early on was how little progress had been made in math learning software. Even fundamental challenges like “how do you easily do math on a pc keyboard?” hadn’t been solved before. We invented a totally recent way for college kids to type math, inspired by Pinyin—the tactic Chinese and Japanese speakers use to type hundreds of characters on a keyboard. This innovation makes it easier for college kids to indicate their work on a pc than on paper. Once the work is digital, AI can analyze it to know the coed’s considering, discover where they went fallacious, and deliver personalized inline feedback. The training experience adapts to every student’s needs in real-time.
How does your platform use data to support teachers with small group instruction and data-driven lesson planning?
Small group instruction is one of the vital impactful strategies for secondary math teachers, but it surely’s also considered one of the toughest to execute. Teachers often have 120 students across multiple classes and subjects, and it’s nearly not possible to pinpoint every student’s gaps, band them together, and create personalized lessons for every group. That’s where Edia is available in. Our platform robotically collects data from classroom assignments, quizzes, and homework to map out exactly where each student is struggling. Then Edia robotically forms small groups and generates customized lesson plans and practice tailored to their needs. This makes small group instruction manageable for teachers and has a big impact on student outcomes.
Chronic absenteeism is a big challenge in lots of districts—how does Edia’s platform address this issue uniquely with AI?
Chronic absenteeism—defined as missing 10% of college or more—has doubled since 2020, and it’s considered one of the most important challenges districts face today. The important thing to solving chronic absenteeism is twofold: districts have to (1) understand and address why students are missing school and (2) rebuild the community’s expectation that coming to class matters. Our platform uses AI to have interaction parents inside minutes of a student missing class to ask why their child is absent.
This interaction reinforces the importance of attendance, and it helps administrators understand the basis causes of absenteeism—whether it’s issues with a selected teacher, social anxiety, lack of transportation, or something else. Armed with this information, schools can take meaningful motion to deal with the issue.
Could you tell us more concerning the AI-driven, multilingual communication system and the way it helps to have interaction families in real-time?
Engaging families effectively requires breaking down communication barriers. Many faculties struggle to attach with parents who speak different languages or don’t check traditional types of communication. Our AI-driven platform tackles this by sending real-time messages within the family’s preferred language, using conversational AI to bridge the gap. For instance, if a student misses class, the system immediately reaches out to that family in Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, or some other language to let the family know and ask for an evidence – and oldsters can easily just reply back. It ensures families stay informed and engaged, while also helping schools address issues proactively. It’s about making a two-way dialogue that fosters trust and accountability.
What’s your long-term vision for Edia? How do you see the platform evolving in the following few years?
Our mission is for each student to have an exceptional experience at school. We would like kids to look back 20 years after graduating and think, “Wow, I used to be really lucky. I had such an excellent time at school.” That’s the type of lasting impact we’re aiming for. Immediately, we’re focused on solving challenges that block students from succeeding. We began by making math accessible for everybody, and we’ve been capable of speed up growth on state exams from 0-2% per 12 months to 8-23% per 12 months, which is incredible. This 12 months, we launched our AI solution to deal with chronic absenteeism, which is one other critical barrier for a lot of students to succeed.
But the probabilities are countless. From improving school budgeting to rethinking the design of college buildings—why accomplish that many colleges seem like prisons?—to tackling critical issues like school safety, there’s a lot to be done. Schools must be places that encourage, support, and protect kids. We see it as Edia’s mission to tackle these challenges and ensure schools provide the perfect environments for growth and learning.
How do you see AI shaping the long run of K-12 education?
Some of the exciting possibilities with AI is solving what’s often known as Bloom’s Two Sigma Problem. In 1984, Benjamin Bloom found that replacing classroom instruction with one-on-one tutoring could improve student performance by two standard deviations, bringing a median student to the highest of their class. But the issue is scale: there are 60 million students within the U.S. and only about 3 million staff. We simply don’t have enough adults to offer personalized tutoring for each child.
That’s where AI is available in. With AI, we’ve an actual likelihood to offer every student the advantages of a tutor. AI can scale this type of personalized instruction in ways in which were never possible before, helping every child reach their full potential.
What’s probably the most rewarding a part of your work at Edia, and the way does it align together with your personal mission in education?
It’s seeing the impact we’re having in such a various range of faculties and students. We work with large urban districts like Fulton County in Georgia, Recent York City, and Palm Beach in Florida. At the identical time, we’re also helping a number of the smallest, most distant schools in northern Alaska, where the one option to get there may be by seaplane or boat.
Knowing that students anywhere in America—whether in the center of Recent York City or in a tiny Alaskan village—are each gaining access to the identical cutting-edge AI technology is de facto fulfilling. We’re giving these kids the experiences, confidence, and support they need to achieve their goals, regardless of where they’re or what their circumstances may be. It’s an incredible privilege to play even a small role in shaping their futures.
