Eugene Kashuk. Image: Brighterly
Founded in 2021, this start-up wants to help US students access quality maths education in a virtual setting.
When the Covid-19 pandemic was at its height, every corner of society was disrupted; education was no exception. To no one’s surprise, the switch to online classrooms and remote work was difficult to say the least.
Four years on from the start of the pandemic, life has mostly returned to normal. But recent research suggests that the period of time characterised by lockdowns is still having an effect, especially when it comes to education.
A Harvard study published at the start of 2024 shows that in the US, academic ‘achievement gaps’ that widened during the pandemic still remain, and have even worsened in some states. The study looked at student maths and reading scores in roughly 8,000 school districts in 30 states from spring 2019 to spring 2023. When it comes to maths, the study found that only one state – Alabama – had returned to pre-pandemic achievement levels.
Another study, the 2023 State of Student Learning Report, showed that the reading and maths performance of students were still below pre-pandemic averages as of 2023 – even when it came to students who didn’t start school until after the pandemic shut schools.
As fears around US student performance continue to cause concern, our Start-up of the Week is dedicated to making a difference in the US maths crisis.
Brighterly is an edtech start-up that has developed an interactive learning platform to assist school students in the US with their maths education. Founded in 2021 in Kyiv, Ukraine by serial entrepreneur Eugene Kashuk, the Brighterly platform connects tutors with students in a virtual classroom.
“We want to make math accessible, affordable and interesting for children,” says Kashuk, who is also CEO of the company. “Brighterly helps parents tackle poor teaching, costly tutoring and low learning outcomes by offering quality math education.
“We want to break a social stereotype that math is not interesting, where education systems are putting kids into this really stressful condition of trying to remember as many facts as possible in a short period.”
Summing it up
Kashuk has been building start-ups for the last nine years, beginning his entrepreneurial career after studying finance at Kyiv National Economic University.
“I quickly realised that a corporate career in finance differs from what I want to pursue in life,” he tells SiliconRepublic.com. “I have always wanted to create things, so I found myself in various business ventures, building marketing projects, teams and operations.
“My first start-up was a marketplace, and I fell in love with the complexity of this business model. Brighterly was a very logical step on my journey as an entrepreneur.”
After looking into the math education crisis in the US, the Brighterly team saw a huge market demand for quality education, resources and teachers. The start-up focused on developing personalised and gamified maths courses that were still affordable for US families.
“All the lessons and learning materials are interactive: you can experiment, play and draw while you learn, which is really important for visual learners,” says Kashuk. “We provide children with unique learning plans based on specific knowledge gaps and preferences, defined at the beginning of the journey.”
Each student is matched with a personal tutor for one-on-one lessons on the platform. These tutors are carefully selected according to Kashuk, who says that only the top 3pc of tutor applicants are accepted.
Along with having a STEM-certified curriculum aligned with the US school programme, the Brighterly platform allows parents to track their child’s progress and have constant meetings with the tutor and Brighterly’s team of learning advisers.
How it’s going
Since its founding in 2021, the Kyiv-based start-up has seen some disruptions on its start-up journey, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which resulted in Brighterly’s team undergoing several evacuation waves and blackouts.
Navigating the edtech scene post-Covid has also been a “rollercoaster”, according to Kashuk.
“The pandemic was a blast for the educational market. Unicorn start-ups grew like mushrooms after the rainy day, and valuations were skyrocketing,” he explains. “By 2022, the world was actively returning to the pre-Covid mode of operation, so many products that grew heavily within that lockdown phase became irrelevant. Some of the market leaders we were inspired by when we launched started falling full speed.”
Nowadays, Kashuk believes the edtech market has stabilised, citing increased investor activity in recent months. “The market we’re in is evergreen,” he says.
“You will always need education. So we’re in a good place at the right moment.”
This appears to be true, as today the company has grown to a team of 250 tutors and 60 team members, and according to Kashuk, has experienced a 429pc growth in completed lessons with the number of active students rising from 374 in September 2023 to 2,200 in September 2024.
“2024 has been defining for the team. We have found and validated our unit economics and scaled successfully,” says Kashuk.
As for the future, Kashuk and the team at Brighterly have some ambitious plans, including expansions into reading and high school math in 2025.
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