Hello everyone. I am Kyle Hogeboom, the founder of Summa, an education startup making humankind smarter.

For you fellow nerds out there, we are making Asimov’s Encyclopedia Galactica real, our very own Encyclopedia Humanum, a summary of human knowledge that we can navigate like a map and learn from in a personalized way. Our goal is to universalize knowledge and personalize learning so anyone can learn everything - because the only way to solve more problems create more culture is to have more ideas in the minds of more people.

Right now, we're in development mode...and a catch-22. To get seed funding to build the demo product, we need traction, but to get traction, we need a demo product. (I know, I know, what a terribly unique problem in the startup world.) So, we're releasing everything but and collecting names of those interested in being the first to try the revolution in education we've been waiting for. Just type in your name and help us launch this thing.

Summa is also hiring, so if you're interested in what we're doing, feel free to reach out through the website. In the meantime, keep on learning.

Thanks!

Serious question - why not just help Khan academy?

Thanks Dave. Because they're disorganized and therefore can't be personalized. An alphabetical listing of all the courses you offer is not a good way of organizing knowledge for first-time learners to navigate. Companies should organize curriculums for their users - a series of courses you have to complete in the right order that build on one another toward the outer branches of specialized knowledge. That way, everyone can get a solid foundation of basic knowledge before learning more advanced topics.

Plus, lecture videos are boring and an obstacle to commonplace learning.

The industry needs innovation.

Curious: it's a grand idea, right up there with Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart. Which makes me curious: it's hiring software developers. Is the platform to be made open source so that it can play in and enrich a vast array of knowledge tools already there?

No, at least not at the start. The education industry needs competition, specifically competitive curriculums, where companies compete to make their customers the smartest with their products. Especially at the start, we need a competitive advantage in order to get a foothold to build better educational products.

> companies compete to make their customers the smartest with their products.

You just 100% lost me. Our educational system needs to educate all, and let them succeed to the best of their abilities, where everyone has a chance at their best potential. The last thing we need is a new system with built-in inequality, where the some folks get the best curriculum and some do not.

I agree that education needs innovation, but I do not want anything to do with it being based on a foundation of competition.

There's a difference between the public school system and the education market (Khan Academy, Duolingo, Brilliant, etc.) Educational products are available to everyone to use. So, companies competing to make "their customers" the smartest is just whoever chooses to use their product, not some restricted class of people. Competition among companies is good when their products are available to all.

But unless you are working in the school system, your products are not available to all. They are available to people who have the additional time/money/devices to subscribe to them. That isn't "all". It will exclude many lower incomes demographics, which are the people most in need of innovation.

Clearly, you have every right to build whatever you wish, but your marketing is going to come off as completely tone-deaf if you profess to be a "revolution in education", when running as a competitive product company.