So, one thing that Khan Academy has always tried to offer is accessible content at a high global standard. A lot of schools don’t even offer the courses that we took for granted, like Physics, Algebra II, Precalculus, etc. Some schools might rarely teach an AP Calculus or AP Biology course, and even if they do, the classes aren’t taught at a high expectation and limited students go on to take the AP exam. One issue I see is that around the world, and even in the US, a lot of kids don’t have access to school, or if they do, it’s a nominal one. What do you think are the key factors of democratizing education?

In the past decade, Khan Academy has gained a lot of traction and we’ve been working hard to make this an amazing learning experience for our 120 million and growing users. I had a bit of delusional optimism that this could scale to millions - although the first year was really hard, I had been receiving letters from around the world from students who watched my videos and realized that closing this education gap was something I was really going to commit to. In 2008, I set up Khan Academy as a not-for-profit, and by 2009 I quit my day job to do this full time. I initially thought it was a horrible idea, but I gave it a shot, and that marked the start of the YouTube channel in 2006. The 2005 version had nothing to do with videos, but in 2006, a friend suggested that I make videos to supplement these exercises that I was creating. I soon began programming some practice problems for them to do, and that first software I wrote was the earliest version of Khan Academy. More than anything, I had a lot of fun connecting with them on a human level and being able to help them cover gaps in their knowledge that had accumulated over time.

That worked out really well, and word spread through the family like a wildfire, until soon, there were 10 or 15 cousins, family, and friends from around the country that I was helping. Naturally, I offered to tutor her, remotely. As that was getting off the ground, one of my cousins, who was 12 years old, said that she needed help with math. In 2004, my original background was in tech, and then after business school I ended up working as an analyst at a hedge fund. How did you found Khan Academy, and how did it grow to the product it is now?

Sal khan tutoring