Nov 7, 2024
Why We Invested in MagicSchool AI
By Smit Naik and Emily Williams
Why We Invested is a series created by the Gary Community Ventures Impact Investing team that highlights recent investments and our overall investment philosophy. The goal of this series is to share our due diligence in service of empowering other impact investors and foundations to continue to leverage their full corpus for mission aligned investments. If you have any additional wonderings or recommended opportunities based on the content you see here, please reach out!
At Gary Community Ventures, we invest in fund managers and entrepreneurs with innovations positioned to scale in the areas we care most about: Family Economic Mobility, School Readiness and Youth Success. Our approach is to invest early and establish strong relationships with managers and portfolio companies to create foundations for trust and impact, with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of Colorado kids and families.
This is why when local educator and entrepreneur, Adeel Khan, approached Gary with the mission of his new tech company MagicSchool AI we felt immediate excitement. He framed the startup as a solution that could “finally give teachers a chance to have a lunch break,” a need he knew personally, first as a high school teacher and then as a school leader and founding principal of DSST: Conservatory Green High School. Adeel was drawn to education to support students, but soon realized the importance of coming alongside the adults in the building who were the true engines of learning and deserved every resource to be successful.
The simplicity, necessity and Adeel’s proximity to educators produced a question that resonated deeply with our investment team: Can a group of ambitious and albeit brilliant Silicon Valley programmers truly empathize with the experiences of teachers and students alike without having worked in that environment? The industry is learning, to little surprise, that the answer is no.
Historically, the EdTech sector sees a majority of innovations developed by technologists attempting education, rather than educators leading innovation with technology. While not always the case, too often this origin results in local schools being the testing ground for tech tools, with learning curves that underdeliver on large promises, add to the administrative burden of the adults in school buildings and ultimately impede student outcomes,
This brings us to a second, impact-oriented problem within EdTech: the assumption that technology will automatically bridge gaps between less-privileged and more-privileged students. Intuitively, we can of course hope that efficient access to quality, personalized education could democratize knowledge, and thus, opportunity. Unfortunately, we’ve seen time and time again that this has not been the case. We now know, and it has been written about extensively, that technology has most often exacerbated existing educational inequities, particularly for students from low-income families or marginalized communities.
Having experienced these shortcomings firsthand, the MagicSchool team, led by Adeel and a majority of career educators, is applying their insights to develop a more meaningful tool for students and teachers, with expierence, empathy and equity at the foundation of everything they do. Guided by the knowledge that its impact is contingent upon equitable access, effective implementation, and thoughtful integration into educational practices, at the time of this writing, the company is one of the fastest growing AI EdTech companies in the world having served more than three and a half million educators across the world. Even now as they grow rapidly week-over-week and continuously innovate on their product, we see their mission of making the lives of teachers easier (as evidenced by their ability to take a lunch break) unchanged.
Ultimately, our investment in MagicSchool aligns with Gary’s core values around the elements critical for Youth Success. We are absolutely honored to support a Denver start-up, now making waves nationally, who is doing the work on behalf of students too often overlooked.
Are you interested in MagicSchool or our youth success approach at Gary? Send us a note.
DIRECTOR, IMPACT INVESTING
SMIT NAIK
Smit Naik is a seasoned impact investor and the Director of Impact Investing at Gary Community Ventures. In his role, Smit is responsible for leading the organization’s efforts to invest in and support innovative social enterprises, particularly in the areas of youth mental health and education, that are creating positive change in their communities. He brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the role, and is committed to advancing the field of impact investing through thoughtful and strategic investments that deliver both financial returns and social impact.
DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS
EMILY WILLIAMS
Emily has spent her career connecting people, ideas, and capital in service of sparking meaningful partnerships and advancing audacious goals. As the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Gary Community Ventures, she designs and leverages engagement opportunities with aligned funders to create collaborative, breakthrough solutions.