Company description
OpenStudy is a platform for peer-to-peer study help that's delivered right away from students around the world, to help high school and college students find answers immediately while learning and empower them with a unique brand of celebrity and credentials through helping others.
Since coming out of beta in March of 2011, OpenStudy has grown into a platform that 200,000 students use to study together each month. Learners come from 180 countries and over 2,000 schools. Users ask over 2,000 questions per day, and 70% of questions are answered by a global set of peers within five minutes.
OpenStudy is used on openstudy.com, mobile, and embedded on digital content sites such as MIT OpenCourseWare, Yale Open Courses, and dozens more.
Team
Chris Sprague is a co-founder and serves as CEO of OpenStudy. Chris comes from a family of educators, driven by his two passions of education and technology at OpenStudy. Prior to OpenStudy, he worked at Oracle and Compiere where he focused on emerging technologies for enterprises. Sprague received his BS from Stanford in Symbolic Systems and his MSCS at Georgia Tech where he published research on learning technology under his now-cofounders, Drs. Ashwin and Preetha Ram. He prides himself on interrupting workflow with well-timed Internet soundboards.
Dr. Ashwin Ram is a co-founder of OpenStudy and an Innovation Fellow at PARC where he manages the Augmented Social Cognition area. He is on leave as a Georgia Tech professor in artificial intelligence and cognitive computing. Dr. Ram has a PhD from Yale University, MS from University of Illinois, and BTech from IIT Delhi. Prior to OpenStudy, he has co-founded two university spinoffs, Enkia (acquired by Sentiment360) and Ardext. He is a closet anthropologist and loves travel, people and culture.
Preetha Ram is a co-founder, Dean for Education and Chief Marketing Officer for OpenStudy. In addition to these awesome responsibilities that she embraces with ease and enthusiasm, she is currently on leave from her position as Associate Dean for Pre-Health and Science Education at Emory College and co-director of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. She received her BS from the Women’s Christian College in Chennai, India, her MS from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India, and her PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from Yale University and also holds an Executive MBA from Emory’s Goizueta School of Business. She loves a good book, travelling and is positive that she was an Italian in her previous life
Business model
OpenStudy is exploring premium features and paid tutoring in addition to the free peer-to-peer community.
Competitive advantage
OpenStudy's advantage rests on the free community of over 200,000 students from 180 countries visiting the site to both receive and contribute study help.
- Fast: 75% of questions are answered within 5 minutes.
- Proven: 80% of students surveyed reported demonstrable improved learning
- Constant: Users are online helping each other 24 hours a day, 7 days a week answering over 2,000 questions each day.
Investors
Chris Sprague
