Brainly: the Polish startup competing with edtech giants

From humble, bootstrapped Central European roots, Brainly is now a global competitor in the AI-edtech race.

Founding story

While nerds often end up ruling the world in one way or another, such a trait is seldom seen as “cool” during school years. A witty, funny yet false answer often renders more “popularity brownie points” than a sober, factual one.

And yet, all students face the inevitability of graded tests, and the need to do well on them. And as the aforementioned conundrum describes, public discourse in the classroom hardly gets them the answers they need.

One of Brainly’s founders and its current CEO, Michał Borkowski, had a different high school experience. He says that his time in high school was marked by enriching collaboration between students. He sought to bring that behavior online. By gamifying the experience to reward correct answers, maybe he could incentivize students to respond more seriously online than in the classroom.