A virtual Swiss Army knife for teachers, Arman Jaffer’s education tool uses AI to generate lesson plans, help with report cards and create pop quizzes. His free product (a premium version is available from $10 per month) launched in 2023 and is already used by 700,000 educators worldwide. The promise? Less time in front of the computer and more face-to-face time with students. “Something that would normally have taken you maybe 20 minutes could be done in two minutes,” he says. To maximize Brisk’s flexibility, he created the software as a Chrome extension that works with a broad range of preexisting educational programs and plays well with Google’s suite of products. The San Francisco–based startup has raised $6.9 million from investors including Owl Ventures, South Park Commons and Springbank.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I think we often think about AI as like a Terminator,
00:03but really what I think we're seeing in the classroom,
00:05particularly with Brisk, is teachers are able to go back
00:08to more time in front of their students
00:10rather than behind a computer.
00:15Hey everybody, I'm here with Arman Jaffer
00:17from Brisk Education.
00:18Thanks for joining us.
00:19Yeah, I'm so excited to be here.
00:21So, pretend I'm like 10 years old.
00:23I'm one of your clients.
00:24Sure.
00:25And explain to me what Brisk does.
00:27Yeah, so Brisk is an AI tool for teachers
00:30to spend over 20 hours a week on their computer
00:33away from their students.
00:34And so with Brisk, we try to automate that,
00:36try to speed up tasks like grading and lesson planning.
00:39So I'm a client of Brisk.
00:41I have your tools open.
00:42It's a Chrome extension, right?
00:43Yeah.
00:44What magic are you doing for me?
00:45Yeah, so imagine your students are submitting,
00:48you know, assignments like a writing assignment.
00:51You can open up that writing assignment.
00:53You can upload a rubric and then get feedback
00:55on that assignment so that you can actually decide
00:58which piece of feedback you agree with
00:59and then share it with students.
01:01And so something that would normally have taken you
01:03maybe 20 minutes could be done in two minutes.
01:06Wow, so everyone's worried about,
01:08oh, are the kids using AI?
01:10Are they cheating?
01:11Are they learning?
01:11You're kind of giving an AI tool for the teachers
01:15to make their lives easier too.
01:17Yeah, exactly.
01:18But we think of it as like a way in which
01:20they can actually provide more feedback to their students.
01:22So students really appreciate it because, you know,
01:25they might have to wait two to three weeks
01:27to get feedback or a grade.
01:28And now with Brisk, a lot of the teachers
01:30are able to give them more opportunities
01:33to improve their work before they submit.
01:35So this AI tool for like, let's say an essay or a paper,
01:38it's kind of like giving the teachers like a first pass,
01:42like a summary of like what was hit on in the essay.
01:45And like, are the teachers still reading the essays?
01:47Yeah.
01:48So they still have to like make sure
01:49that the feedback is applicable,
01:51but rather than writing that feedback out themselves,
01:53they can just see some potential suggestions.
01:56It's kind of like autocomplete, right?
01:58You still are very much in control,
02:00but you don't have to type it out yourself.
02:03Do kids still hand in papers on paper or is it all digital?
02:06Yeah, so that's actually something,
02:07this like whole shift that I got to see
02:09over the last 10 years from when I was in high school,
02:12where we were still very much printing out assignments
02:14to where we are post pandemic,
02:16where almost every piece of student work
02:18that a student is submitting is now through the computer,
02:21through Google Docs, through Google Classroom,
02:23through Microsoft and things like that.
02:25So post pandemic students,
02:27particularly in high school and middle school
02:29are really not actually printing out things
02:32and submitting them.
02:33What were you doing before you started Brisk?
02:35Yeah, so I-
02:36Because you have a cool background.
02:37I appreciate that.
02:38So I spent five years at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
02:40I actually founded along with another engineer at Brisk,
02:43this product called Notebooks,
02:45which was like Google Docs,
02:46except much more tailored to the classroom.
02:48And so had the chance to lead a team there
02:50at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for a while.
02:52What'd you do there?
02:54So I led a product team as a product manager,
02:56basically working with a couple of engineers and designers
02:59to launch this product.
03:00Okay, what was like your mandate?
03:02What was like your goal?
03:02Like when you create a product to do web?
03:04Yeah, so Notebooks tried to basically improve
03:08the quality of feedback that teachers gave on student work.
03:11So it's a problem that I'm still working on, but pre AI.
03:14So we actually built like Google Docs,
03:16except our own version called Notebooks.
03:18And so students would basically use this word processing tool
03:22to complete assignments.
03:23And then their teachers would kind of open up those notebooks
03:26and kind of provide grades.
03:27Wow.
03:28And tell me about, so you're at Chan Zuckerberg,
03:30which is obviously a really exciting nonprofit,
03:33cutting edge, very well-funded.
03:34Obviously you have the backing
03:35of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
03:38What was the spark that said, you know what?
03:40I'm gonna leave this and start my own thing.
03:42I think one of the things that I realized over time
03:45was that education is a really interesting,
03:47like there's so many facets to education, right?
03:49And one of the things that a startup provides
03:52is the ability to really start from scratch
03:55and to build something really quickly.
03:56And I think at philanthropies,
03:58which can provide a lot of resources,
04:00they often can't be as scrappy as say a startup.
04:03And so I think a lot of innovation kind of requires
04:07potentially a startup kind of format
04:11in order to kind of manifest.
04:12And so it felt like a startup was a natural way
04:15to kind of push the bounds of what's possible.
04:17Gotcha, so how'd you get started?
04:19Well, I quit my job.
04:20I think that was a big leap of faith
04:22that I would be able to figure it out.
04:23I actually didn't have the idea for Brisk when I quit,
04:26but I just wanted to explore different ideas.
04:28And so-
04:29So you quit just to be like,
04:30I'm gonna start noodling things out.
04:32It wasn't like you had this burning idea.
04:33You're like, I'm gonna quit.
04:35Yeah.
04:36And kind of just burn the bridge
04:37and burn the shifts behind me
04:39and just come up with an idea.
04:40Exactly, and honestly seeing a couple of my friends
04:43who haven't quit their jobs,
04:45if you have the privilege of being able to quit your job
04:47and kind of figure it out,
04:48I think that is the best way to kind of start a startup
04:51because you're seeing your bank account dwindle
04:54and it creates a lot of pressure
04:55to build conviction in an idea,
04:57which otherwise I think you can always explore ideas
05:00for a long time.
05:01And so I've definitely seen folks who have quit their jobs
05:05tend to end up finding startup ideas faster.
05:07That's interesting.
05:08It's like you're putting all the cards on the table, right?
05:10What about the idea for Brisk?
05:13Where did it come from?
05:15Yeah, so I worked on this product called Notebooks, right?
05:19And so I would call it a point solution
05:21because teachers already had so many tools.
05:23Actually, the average teacher in the US
05:25uses over 140 ed tech tools or applications
05:27or websites in a given school year.
05:30And so I basically kind of conceived
05:33of this new idea, Notebooks,
05:34which was like the 141st tool
05:36that a teacher would have to use.
05:38And so through that process,
05:39just felt like the last thing teachers needed
05:42was another tool.
05:43And at the same time, seeing ChatGPT pop off
05:47there's all these applications around lesson planning
05:48and grading that were just so obvious.
05:50I was like, how do you build something that isn't a tool
05:53that can still speed up and build coherence
05:57and streamline a teacher's workflow?
05:59And so ended up kind of building conviction
06:01in this idea of a Chrome extension
06:03because you could bring the power of AI
06:05directly to the tools that teachers are already using.
06:08And so that seemed like the natural thing
06:10because if you think about one of the things
06:12that AI is really good at,
06:13it's streamlining, it's automation,
06:15it's speeding things up.
06:17But all those tasks teachers were doing
06:19were in the tools themselves.
06:20So you can't really build a platform
06:22to speed up things that teachers are doing in other places.
06:25And so Chrome extension was a natural vehicle.
06:27Gotcha, so it kind of gave you access
06:29to be everywhere people already are.
06:31Yeah, to follow the teacher around,
06:32to try to be helpful when it's necessary.
06:34Almost like a Clippy for teachers.
06:36There you go, you're bringing Clippy back.
06:38I like that. Yeah, exactly.
06:39So you have this idea now for Brisk.
06:41Take me from, oh, I have an idea to like,
06:44I'm hiring, I'm recruiting, I'm raising money.
06:45Like, how did that work?
06:47Yeah, I'm really fortunate that a lot of the folks
06:49that initially joined Brisk,
06:50I had worked with at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
06:52So that core team was pretty much the same.
06:54The data scientists I work with, the founding engineers.
06:58And so kind of had this idea,
07:00kind of raised a little bit of money just off of the idea
07:02and kind of building it myself.
07:03I had not been a software engineer
07:05for four or five years before that,
07:07but kind of relearned some of it
07:08just to build a proof of concept to raise some money.
07:11And then brought over a couple of my colleagues
07:15that I really enjoyed working with.
07:17And from there, kind of, you know, built it out.
07:20We launched about a year ago.
07:21Okay.
07:22And now one in 10 teachers in the US
07:24is actually using Brisk.
07:25One in 10?
07:25Yeah.
07:26How do you make money?
07:27Yeah, so we offer our tool for free to teachers
07:30because we think it's, you know,
07:31teachers often don't have a lot of money to spend on tools.
07:35I remember like teachers, when I went into high school,
07:37like they were saving to be able to throw pizza parties
07:40and things like that.
07:41Often we don't compensate our teachers enough.
07:44And so we build a really robust free tool for teachers.
07:48And then as teachers use that tool,
07:50they often go to their school district and say,
07:52hey, we really want the premium version.
07:54And so their school district will purchase
07:55the premium version.
07:56That was like, I used to, I did a story on Airtable
07:59and their method back in the day was giveaway for free
08:03and have all the individuals that companies use it
08:06and then go to the head of IT and be like,
08:07hey, we need to get a bigger seat for this.
08:09So it's kind of like you're doing grassroots.
08:11Exactly.
08:12Yeah.
08:13And they pay you like a SAS subscription
08:14to school districts.
08:15Exactly, yeah.
08:15Okay, very cool.
08:16How much money have you raised?
08:18$6.9 million.
08:19What was that product?
08:20Did you go in there and like you're pitching AI
08:22big time over and over again?
08:23Yeah, how did I, I guess one of the things is
08:27I don't think I'm a great fundraiser.
08:29I think really for us that the compelling vision
08:32that a lot of investors really appreciate it is
08:35kind of we have this diagnosis about ed tech,
08:37which is that since the 80s,
08:40like teachers and school districts have purchased more
08:42and kind of built on more technologies.
08:44And so I don't know if you know
08:45what a student information system is,
08:47but it's like this like basically where you track attendance
08:49and grades and things like that.
08:51And over time, we've just layered more and more technology
08:54onto teachers.
08:55And so kind of really, we think at Brisk,
08:58we really believe that entire suite of tools
09:01needs to be refactored or redesigned in the era of AI.
09:04And so are that vision of basically building
09:07a compound startup that can rewrite
09:09the fundamental building blocks of the classroom tech stack
09:12was something that I think a lot of investors
09:14really appreciated because what I think really happens
09:17is all these, basically in order to do innovation
09:20in ed tech, you have to really innovate
09:22at the margins of the core experience.
09:24You add yet another tool for teachers.
09:26And so I think what investors really appreciated
09:29about our vision was like, how can we redesign it,
09:33this whole classroom ed tech stack
09:34in a way that makes sense in the world of AI?
09:36And so that seemed to be something that worked well
09:39for our fundraise.
09:40All right, cool.
09:41So you have over $6 million in fundraising.
09:43You have one in 10 teachers in America using Brisk.
09:47What are you focused on now?
09:48Like what is your aim?
09:49What is your mission for the next year?
09:50Yeah, so one thing that has been really interesting to see
09:54over the course of the last three years
09:55is how teachers' own perceptions and attitudes
09:58about AI have shifted.
10:00So when we started Brisk,
10:01the attention was completely on AI detection.
10:03I think you mentioned students using AI
10:06to potentially cheat.
10:07And so that was actually one of the tools
10:08we first started with.
10:10And then over the course of the last academic year,
10:12we saw a lot of teachers start to explore AI
10:14to do things like grading and lesson planning,
10:17to be able to streamline and speed up tasks
10:20that they're doing.
10:21And now what we're seeing in this new school year
10:24is teachers really wondering,
10:26how can I give my students AI experiences
10:28that will prepare them for the future
10:30so that when they graduate,
10:32they understand how to use these tools
10:33in a sound way, in a safe way,
10:36but also ways in which that can promote their learning
10:39and own productivity.
10:40And so just last week,
10:42we actually launched a tool called Boost,
10:44which is our student-facing tool.
10:46And so that gives teachers the ability
10:48to take something that they're looking at,
10:49say a slide presentation or a YouTube video
10:52or a online textbook,
10:54and create an AI chatbot
10:55that's based on that specific content
10:57and share it with students.
10:58And students basically have to progress
11:00through learning objectives.
11:01And so we're really gonna be focused
11:03on how we can build a tool for students
11:06that is able to kind of really almost be
11:09like that personalized tutor
11:11to really support them when they get stuck.
11:13Often, I don't know if this was you in the classroom
11:16when you were a kid,
11:17but if you're at the back of the class,
11:19you're either not engaged with the content
11:23because it's either too hard or too easy,
11:25or it just doesn't feel relevant.
11:28How'd you know?
11:28You know me, man.
11:29I think we all, in some ways,
11:31had that type of experience in one way or the other,
11:33whether it was in high school or college.
11:35And so I think one of the real big potentials with AI
11:39is really to meet students where they're at
11:41so that every student at the end of the class
11:42gets the content and gets the skills they need,
11:45but their journeys might look different.
11:46And so I think with Boost,
11:48we're really excited to be able to support students.
11:50How many employees do you have?
11:5217.
11:53Gotcha, and how does that break down
11:54between sales, engineering, product?
11:57I would say we have three big functions,
11:59and I think they're split pretty evenly.
12:01So product, which is like engineering and design,
12:06marketing, and sales.
12:07Which language model have you built your AI up top of?
12:10Yeah, so we've used a lot of the models that are out there.
12:14Basically, we found that different models
12:17are good at different tasks,
12:18and so we try to leverage them when possible.
12:21Okay, very cool.
12:22What is your prediction in the next year or two with AI?
12:26I mean, obviously, you're building the software,
12:29applying it to education.
12:31The AI spectrum is everything from this is overhyped
12:34to the Terminator is gonna come and kill us all.
12:36Where do you fall in AI,
12:38and what big changes do you expect to happen?
12:41Or no change?
12:41Yeah, I feel like there's a...
12:43I watch the podcast, Hard Fork,
12:44and they always ask, what's your P-Doom?
12:46We're like, are you a boomer or a doomer
12:49in terms of how likely is AI going to shift things?
12:53A boomer or a doomer, I like that, okay.
12:55But I think I'm probably right around the middle.
12:58I don't have a strong perspective.
13:01I think often what we're gonna see is,
13:03there was this whole excitement around just chat GPT
13:07and some of the obvious use cases,
13:08and I think what we're gonna see over time
13:10is that we'll get more specific about specific domains
13:14like education, where you'll learn
13:15that it's really good at this specific task.
13:17And so I think there's a long tail of discovery
13:20around what AI will be good at.
13:21I don't have like a...
13:22I'm not smart enough, I think,
13:23to have like a perspective on AGI and things like that.
13:26And for people who are in education now
13:29or wanting to get into education,
13:30with all this change happening,
13:32what advice would you have for them?
13:33Or how do you see the role of teacher
13:35changing in this age of AI?
13:38Yeah, so I'll answer the second question first,
13:40which is, I think teaching is gonna become
13:42a lot more human.
13:43I think we often think about AI as like a Terminator,
13:46but really what I think we're seeing in the classroom,
13:48particularly with Brisk,
13:50is teachers are able to go back to their students
13:52to spend more time in front of their students
13:54rather than behind a computer.
13:55And so our vision is if we can speed up the things
13:58that teachers are doing on their computers,
14:00they can actually spend more time with their students.
14:02What are your bold predictions
14:04about the education world in the next couple of years?
14:08I think what's really interesting is,
14:10I don't know if you've been following the phone bans,
14:13but a lot of states are implementing phone bans
14:16where students aren't able to use phones in the classroom.
14:18Yeah, they put them in bags.
14:19Yeah.
14:20It's like a Dave Chappelle show.
14:22They take the phones, put them in bags
14:23until the end of school,
14:25and then they give them back to them.
14:26Yeah, and so I think what we're gonna see
14:28is a maturing of our own perspectives
14:32around technology in the classroom,
14:33particularly with AI.
14:35I think a lot of the ed tech
14:38that was introduced in the classroom
14:39during the pandemic was out of necessity.
14:41And I think we're gonna have a real realization
14:44about what is the role of technology in the classroom
14:46and what is not the role of technology in the classroom.
14:49And so I'm excited to see where that goes
14:52because I think it is important
14:53to try to understand what are the things
14:55that should not have a technological angle.
14:59Are you pro-phone ban?
15:01I don't have a strong perspective.
15:02I would ask teachers in their specific classes
15:05what would work for them.
15:06Thanks, everyone.
15:07Appreciate it. Of course.
15:08Thanks.