Amir Nathoo - CEO of Outschool

Jul 11, 2019

On this episode of The EdTech Startup Show, I talk to Amir Nathoo (@amirnathoo), CEO & co-founder of Outschool.

Amir leads growth, trust and safety at Outschool. He previously worked at Square founding the Square Payroll product. Before that he was CEO and co-founder of Trigger.io, having started his career at IBM. Amir holds an MEng from Cambridge.

Outschool is a marketplace of live online classes for kids. The company's mission is to inspire kids to love learning. They provide small group classes that meet over live video chat where learners are connected with teachers and classmates who share their interests. These classes are offered through Outschool's marketplace and conducted on their remote learning platform.

Amir encourages interested teachers to explore the flexibility, autonomy, and income-earning opportunities available to teachers on Outschool.

• Learn about teaching on Outschool here.
• Explore Outschool's live online classes for kids here.

Highlights from the episode

• The class Amir would like to teach on Outschool
• How playing computer games for hours led to Amir's career in technology
• In the very early days, Amir taught an Outschool class on startups and business. He tells this story
• The incredible power of learning from teachers who love their subject area
• "Math art"?? - This is just one example of a unique and inspirational class available on Outschool
• The relationship between inspired students, passionate teachers, and supportive parents
• How a retired economics professor helped guide a young Amir on his journey to become a programmer
• San Francisco, 2015: the story of Amir, Mikhail, & Nick coming together to start Outschool
• HS physics teacher --> first engineer at Airbnb --> product manager at Clever --> founder of Outschool: Amir explains the journey of his co-founder Nick Grandy
• Version 1.0 of Outschool was in-person classes: Amir explains
• The critical difference between live online video and other online education modalities
• An inspiring story of how Megan Hardy became (the world's first?) full-time teacher of Dungeons & Dragons classes
• Another incredible story: Kirsten Bowman, a UN human rights lawyer, who teaches social studies classes to young learners on Outschool
• Pet Reptile Social Hour. You'll just have to listen to learn more.
• Why Amir wonders if his son might want to pursue e-sports instead of programming when 20 years from now
• The inherent tension between core, standardized knowledge bases with career and interest-specific skills
• The new role of coding and technological literacy as a core subject for all learners
• Amir and I will need to talk again in 5-10 years to evaluate the predictions made during our conversation
• A teacher for every learner's interest: Amir's vision for the future of Outschool
• Amir's invitation to teachers who are waiting to teach the subjects they've always wanted to teach
• Objective, secular, age-appropriate: the fair and open content guidelines for classes on Outschool

If you liked this episode, then leave a review on iTunes, and share it with a friend.

Thanks for listening!

Gerard Dawson