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When you were in school, how much time did you waste making study aids? Probably more than you’d have liked.
Austin-based startup Prepflash is making studying easier by creating those flashcards and quiz questions for you, with just the snap of a photo or tap on your mobile device.
Founder John Hanks is a former VP of Product at National Instruments, who had his a-ha moment while creating study aids for his kids. He knew there had to be a better, much more efficient way using technology.
So he created Prepflash, a technology using cognitive science through the IBM Watson platform to automatically create study aids from the content you upload. That content could be from a textbook page you took a picture of, a wikipedia page or even a YouTube video. Hanks goal was to save students precious time and help them get studying faster. Generated questions can be multiple choice, true or false or even fill in the blank.
“This is the challenge right now. We’re all bombarded with so much information,” Hanks said. “What Prepflash does is it helps you summarize the most relevant content and test you over that content.”
And while the app was originally designed for students, Hanks quickly discovered how valuable the product could be for large organizations. Many businesses have started using the app for corporate training purposes.
Prepflash went through the SeedSumo accelerator, during which it was granted $50,000 in funding. The company still maintains a big presence in College Station, as many of their developers still reside there.
Hanks plans to add several more features down the road, including the ability to make study materials from Evernote and Kahn Academy. It currently runs on a freemium model, with prices increasing as you upload more content over periods of time.
While still in the beta phase, the company has already gained 5500 users, and an incredible amount of feedback to continue improving the product. Between schools and corporate users, Hanks said they’re breaking into a $4 billion marketplace with their launch this fall.
“We think we can carve out a new category of software called rapid elearning,” Hanks said.
“We’re not just telling you to look at a video to learn, we actually want you to quickly load up the information to get to the most relevant information you need to really learn.”
