People in tech often talk about “signal” and “noise.” To exist in our ecosystem is to be overloaded by endless information streams—product launches, research advancements, funding announcements—all promising to transform our lives. With the advent of AI, the megaphone has amplified. Success in startups is increasingly measured by how well you pan for nuggets of gold within an endlessly noisy feed.
Fortunately, the spinning core of all technology is engineering, where noise is ground against reality. Working in startups means keeping an eye on every feed while keeping one foot planted in science and economics. The field self-selects for people who dream about science fiction yet remain obsessive about the mundane details required to ship.
This state—tuned to the future but relentless about financial reality—creates blind spots. The largest is the gap between techno-utopian promises and the moment a customer pulls out a credit card. We install guardrails for the AGI syndicate that will rule humanity, race to ship GPT-powered erotica for $20 subscriptions, and somehow leave the wave of AI deepfakes scamming elderly people as “something we’ll get to.”
If rising mental-health diagnoses and falling test scores tell us anything, it’s that young people absorb the impact of these blind spots. The average American teen’s day looks like this:
- Wake up and open a feed engineered by brilliant minds to keep you scrolling—content increasingly generated by AI.
- Arrive at school for hour-long lessons that neurodivergence or missing prerequisites make nearly impossible to absorb.
- Go home and “unwind,” probably by scrolling again.
- “Do” homework, meaning upload assignments to an AI tool that spits out answers.
- Decide what to do with free time (see step one).
The day’s real stimulation happens inside those videos: violent, inspiring, depressing, divisive, meaningless—extreme noise with almost no signal, designed to addict unsettled teenagers. Because society incentivizes the best minds to build maximally consumable products, we must support the millions who are overfed yet undernourished. We can’t assume young people will simply adapt.
This is where AI can help. Properly aligned, it can become both a bulwark against the sea of noise and a gentle gateway to the right signals. It can curate the subset of information a learner actually needs, filter every feed, and gradually deliver the information diet that produces focus and joy.
The problem: few consumers voluntarily go on diets. The AI-mediated lens to the internet is better incentivized to study our impulses so it can amplify our work, serve us erotica, and generate an even stickier feed.
There is one cohort whose experiences are managed by people aligned with their wellbeing: children, especially in the education system. Yet even there, the guardrails are ineffective. Parents and teachers need better tools.
The products we require are those aligned with—and easily managed by—parents, incorporating the guidance of teachers, and always incentivized to support a child’s wellbeing. No incumbent gets this space for free. Trust must be earned from day one.
We believe the starting point is education. The ability to learn is the most valuable skill in the modern world, yet our system struggles to help students practice and master it. Parents pour over $14B into tutoring because they know what research has proven since the 1960s: the best way to learn is one-on-one. For the first time, AI can deliver in software what once cost hundreds of dollars per hour—personalized, patient, persistent tutors that stay aligned by selling to parents.
Concretely, this means AI that proactively manages attention, learns with and about a student over long horizons, and offers wise guidance through the modern information environment. It leverages growing rapport to deliver more effective, more engaging experiences that meet students where they are.
In 2030, students won’t be left alone in the sea of AI-produced content. They won’t sit in classrooms misaligned with their psychologies, go home to homework they can’t complete, and resist the temptation of AI answer machines. Their tutor will work alongside them—carefully, methodically, joyfully—through the hardest lessons, then extend learning beyond the classroom with extracurricular experiences once unimaginable.
In 343 BCE, Philip of Macedon hired Aristotle to teach Alexander the Great. Our company will bring that caliber of tutor to every household. No problem is more pressing. No goal is more meaningful.