Built by Students, for Students: How Opennote Is Reimagining Studying
The team behind Opennote believes the future of edtech will be co-created by learners themselves—and they’ve got the momentum to back it up.
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Built by Students, for Students: How Opennote Is Reimagining Studying
By: Vedant Vyas
Vedant Vyas is the Co-Founder of Opennote, a Y Combinator-backed, interactive AI-powered platform built by undergraduates to transform how students engage with course content. As a Software Engineering student at the University of Guelph, he helped launch Opennote where he is building personalized video lessons and collaborative study tools now used by thousands of students to better understand what they’re learning.
What if students could design the tools they need for studying and learning?
That was the question that launched Opennote. As three undergraduates navigating the chaos of modern studying — tabs full of PDFs, lecture recordings, YouTube explainers, and Google Docs — we weren’t just witnessing a broken system. We were living it.
So we built for ourselves. And in doing so, we tapped into something bigger.
The Origin: A Problem We Knew Too Well
As STEM students and peer tutors, my co-founders and I saw the same pattern over and over again: fragmented content, one-size-fits-all explanations, and passive study habits. We weren’t the exception — we were the use case.
University gave us a rare advantage: a sandbox to build, test, and iterate in real time with our peers. No waiting for school district pilots or procurement cycles. Just feedback, friction, and faster cycles.
That closeness to the user turned into our superpower. Because we were the users.
Within months, we grew to 50K+ users across 100 countries entirely through organic word of mouth — a rare feat in EdTech. No paid ads, no influencer campaigns. Just students telling other students that this thing actually worked.
Building the Tool We Needed
From the beginning, Opennote wasn’t about flash. It was about function. We designed around four core pillars:
Text-to-Video Pipeline: Turn raw notes into Feynman-style explainers, practice quizzes, and whiteboards.
AI Chat as Peer: A conversational study partner that knows your learning style and surfaces exactly what you need.
Video Vault: A searchable archive of thousands of educational videos generated by students on Opennote.
Collaborative Journals: Shared workspaces where peers — along with an embedded AI layer — can ask questions, annotate, and build understanding together.
As usage grew, we listened closely. Students loved the tools — but many exported their learnings elsewhere to “go deeper.” That feedback sparked a major shift post-YC funding: instead of being an external tool, what if Opennote became the tutor inside your notes?
We’re now beta testing a proactive AI Tutor that moves beyond the transactional chatbot experience. Rather than waiting to be asked for help, it learns from your writing and thinking patterns — guiding you with Socratic questions, targeted comments, and visual explanations that deepen understanding right where you’re working. One user told us, “It’s like having a tutor in my head.”
While this is merely a review, there’s solid research supporting the experience: contextual, AI-based tutors produce significant learning gains. Meta-analyses show traditional intelligent tutoring systems deliver moderate-to-large effects on academic learning—typically in the range of d ≈ 0.6 to 0.8 standard deviations compared to traditional instruction. And, recent experimental studies reinforce these results. One novel AI tutor matched to active-learning best practices showed students learned more than two times as much in less time, estimating effect sizes between 0.73 to 1.3 SD, with statistical significance (p < 10⁻⁸).
This pivot wasn’t just a product evolution — it was a clarity of purpose and impact.
Here’s a demo video of the new product features we’re working on… if you’d like to try it out before it’s launched you can contact me at vedant@opennote.com!
Challenges We Faced (And What We Learned)
As students and first time founders, we learned a lot along the way. Here were some of our core learnings:
1. Product-Market Fit in a Legacy Ecosystem
Breaking into an LMS-dominated market wasn’t easy. Students default to PDFs, Google Docs, and lecture slides. We had to offer something meaningfully better — not just different. Custom video generation, adaptive quizzes, and learning-style personalization helped us stand out.
2. Gen AI Infrastructure Costs
LLMs are powerful but expensive. As we developed, we noticed that LLMs and existing infrastructure aren't designed for teaching students. So, we've been building our own pedagogically-aware infrastructure from the ground up, leveraging open-source models like LLaMA and keeping latency under 20 seconds—essential for student retention.
3. Scaling Trust Across Campuses
We launched a campus ambassador program to build community-led growth. Today, we have ambassadors across UC Berkeley, UWaterloo, UToronto, CMU, and more — each one a bridge between our product and real student needs.
4. Fundraising Without Credentials
We didn’t have Ivy League MBAs or past exits. What we had was product obsession. Instead of chasing VCs, we focused on demos, retention, and building in public. Eventually, investors came to us — leading to our $850K pre-seed and YC acceptance.
What EdTech Can Learn from Student Builders
As founders building for our own community, we’ve seen firsthand the power of proximity. Here’s what we believe more EdTech companies should consider:
Build with, not for. Involve students early and often. Their context isn’t a use case — it’s the foundation.
Prioritize community over conversion. Peer-to-peer trust moves faster than any paid campaign.
Obsess over usage depth. It’s not enough to get a student to sign up — the real win is making something they can’t study or learn without.
Don’t underestimate infrastructure. Personalization means latency matters. The best tools feel instant, invisible, and intuitive.
Design for delight, not just utility. Students today have consumer-grade expectations. A study tool must be as intuitive as Spotify or Duolingo.
What We’d Tell Other Student Founders
You don’t need permission to start. You just need proximity, obsession, and the willingness to listen. Your lived experience is valid user research — as long as you stay humble enough to iterate when you’re wrong.
Also: don’t optimize too early for revenue, venture funding, or scale. Optimize for love. If people don’t love what you’re building, growth is hollow.
Looking Ahead: What’s Next for Opennote
We’re just getting started. Our next chapter includes:
Deeper integration into institutional workflows (think Canvas and SIS).
Continued investment in proactive experiences that understand individual pacing and learning styles.
A growing library of collaborative, multimodal learning experiences.
But the heart of it remains the same: students helping students learn better — not just through tools, but through trust.
If the last decade was about platforms, we believe the next one will be about learning ecosystems designed by those they serve. We want to see more student builders, more teacher-led innovations, and more tools shaped not by institutions, but by communities.
Let’s Connect!
We’d love to hear from others working at the intersection of AI and learning. You can reach me directly at vedant@opennote.com or explore our platform at opennote.com.
Let’s keep building the future of learning — from the inside out.
This edition of the Edtech Insiders Newsletter is sponsored by Tuck Advisors.
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Top Edtech Headlines
1. Instructure and OpenAI Announce Global Partnership to Embed AI Learning Experiences Within Canvas
Instructure and OpenAI have teamed up to integrate OpenAI’s cutting-edge AI technology into the Canvas Learning Management System. This partnership will enable educators to create personalized, AI-powered learning experiences while ensuring control over student data and educational outcomes. Tools like AI-assisted grading and scheduling are designed to boost teaching effectiveness and student engagement.
2. Roblox Expands Into EdTech With Google, BBC Games
Roblox has launched its Learning Hub, a new portal that integrates educational content into its popular gaming platform. Partnering with Google’s Be Internet Awesome, BBC Bitesize, and Sesame Workshop, the initiative offers interactive learning experiences in subjects like computer science, math, and online safety to engage students and educators alike.
3. Cambiar Thrive’s New Funding Opportunity Aims to Close Education Data Gap
Cambiar Thrive’s Big Ideas Challenge will award $100,000 grants, with a subset of grantees eligible for $250,000+ of follow-on funding, to organizations with groundbreaking ideas on how to provide students and/or caregivers with easy-to-obtain, meaningful, and actionable information about their student’s K-12 education and development.
Apply now through Aug 31!
4. Quizlet's 'How America Learns' Report Explores the Future of Education Through the Lens of AI, Digital Learning, and Student Success
Quizlet's latest report highlights the increasing adoption of AI tools among students and teachers. Quizlet's survey found that 85% of respondents – including high school and college teachers, as well as students aged 14-22 - said they used AI technology, a significant increase from 66% in 2024.
5. Pearson Launches Innovation Lab to Advance AI and Immersive Learning
Pearson has opened "Pearson Labs" in London to accelerate the development of generative AI and XR-based learning solutions. The lab will focus on prototyping scalable tools, leveraging partnerships with Meta, Google, and Vū Technologies to explore personalized content and immersive assessment experiences.
6. EdTech MBA Fall 2025 Fellowship is Open! Apply Now!
The EdTech MBA Community has launched its Fall 2025 Fellowship, connecting edtech companies with top-tier MBA talent from 60+ global programs for remote, 10-week projects in areas like product, growth, and strategy. Submit your project proposal by August 15 to tap into this high-performing, edtech-focused talent pool.
7. BrainPOP Appoints Lorin Thomas-Tavel as CEO to Drive Growth and Innovation
BrainPOP has named Lorin Thomas-Tavel, a seasoned edtech leader with experience at Pearson and 2U, as its new CEO. She will focus on scaling BrainPOP’s impact through deeper partnerships and advancing student-centered learning technologies.
8. Now Accepting Applications: Cooney Center’s Sandbox for Literacy Innovations
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop is now accepting applications for its Sandbox for Literacy Innovations, a no-cost program that supports edtech and media companies in co-designing research-backed literacy tools with children. Selected partners will collaborate with experts, engage in live co-design sessions, and help shape the future of literacy learning in the U.S.
Learn more and apply by August 29, 2025
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Interview: Tammy Wincup, CEO of Securely
We have had some amazing guests on The Edtech Insiders Podcast in the last few weeks. One of our stand-out interviews from this past week is Tammy Wincup, Chief Executive Officer of Securly, the leading digital safety and wellness company serving over 22,000 K-12 schools globally to keep students safe, secure, and ready to learn.
Here’s a deep dive on our interview with Tammy, and we encourage you to give the full episode a listen for more!
The Evolution of Digital Safety in Schools
Tammy Wincup outlines how Securly has transformed from a simple web-filtering tool into a comprehensive digital safety platform. With expanded features like classroom management, device oversight, and wellness monitoring, the platform now enables schools to holistically address digital risks and guide safe technology use.
“We are really, really focused with K–12 schools globally around how do we look at all the vectors that a school is using from a technology perspective... how students are using digital resources and arm the district with an ability to kind of see how to teach better with that and keep them safe. I feel a huge amount of responsibility now in this era to ensure that we’re doing it safely.”
– Tammy Wincup
Balancing Surveillance, Safety, and Student Privacy
Wincup emphasizes Securly’s commitment to maintaining student privacy while still monitoring for behavioral signals that indicate risk. The platform masks identities until patterns like bullying or self-harm become clear, at which point school officials can intervene appropriately.
“The digital footprint we know is really important in telling us things about how students are learning... but they’re kids and they make mistakes, and we don’t need those pieces following students unless the district or the parent makes that decision... You can see the trends without seeing individual students, until there’s a cadence of self-harm or violence or bullying.”
– Tammy Wincup
Smartphone Bans and Their Impact on Device Use
With increasing implementation of smartphone bans in schools, Wincup shares surprising data: when smartphones are removed from schools, students' use of school-issued devices jumps significantly. This shifts the responsibility back onto schools to ensure that those devices are being used safely and productively.
“What we saw in those states... is when the mobile phone or the smartphone is not in the building with the students, their school-issued device usage goes up by 30%. So the work that we are doing on those devices becomes that much more important.”
– Tammy Wincup
AI in K–12: Risks, Opportunities, and Policy
Wincup advises districts to resist banning AI tools. Instead, she encourages them to embrace AI while building in safety, transparency, and educational guardrails. She frames AI as an essential literacy and warns that blanket bans are not only ineffective but counterproductive.
“Please don’t block AI. What we saw over the last year was a huge number that were just blocking the LLMs at the domain level... We need to be helping students understand how to use it and also how to process when not to use it. And the only way to do that is to actually have some transparency in it.”
– Tammy Wincup
Strategic Role of CTOs and Evolving School Tech Leadership
Tammy notes a significant shift in the role of school technology leaders. From formerly being help-desk managers, they are now central to district strategy, guiding policies around AI, digital usage, and data integration. This moment, she says, puts them back at the forefront of decision-making.
“For the first time... CTOs and districts are going to be back at the table on a strategy perspective. In between these movements, they became kind of purchasers of technology. Now... they become partners with counselors, with principals, in a different way than when they were just trying to put hardware into kids’ hands.”
– Tammy Wincup
Curious to Learn More?
You can listen to our full interview with Tammy, as well as interviews with many other edtech founders, investors, and thought leaders at The Edtech Insiders Podcast! Check it out, and as always, we’d love to hear what you think!
This edition of The Edtech Insiders Newsletter is sponsored by Starbridge.
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Loved this! A few thoughts in case it helps:
1) One key user segment -- who could demonstrate meaningful gains -- may be neurodivergent students, coming off 504 Plan / IEP (not available in college).
● During my MS.Ed, I had conceptualized a platform for ND students like my own teens* that would have elements like your product. I have a pretty good sense that ON should work for many ND students who are functional in general ed, without a lot of reprio to your feature list. I'll ask my son to try it out. He is good at giving user feedback.
● I'd recomm talking to Disability Resource Centers. They may be able to vet your tool and/or do a case study. (I wish there were a way for my son to work on this with you at his university.)
2) If you can somehow add a way to record and transcribe class lecture into notes, that may be even better. That's a key point where notes taking starts -- or fails, like, doesn't even happen or students can't keep up. And again, far worse situation for my ND students.
3) "— the real win is making something they can’t study or learn without." I get why you said this. But I do want you to think about this carefully. All EdTech (ask Alex Sarlin, Ben Kornell and other seasoned folks) should eventually *empower* students. When you've created a hard-dependency, you've taken away agency. My ND students may absolutely *need* ON. Or, students who take my executive function coaching may *need* that for sure. But as educators, our job is to empower them to be as independent as they can be. Just think on it. I'm sure you'll find the right balance of Sticky and Soul for Opennote.
[*If you find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kashifmali/, you'll see a blog about Neuron Labs, its origin and the path I instead concluded worked more authentically for me. Happy to chat if you'd like.]