The co-founders who sold their last startup to Spotify are working on new projects. It’s an AI-powered education startup called Oboe, backed by a $4 million seed investment. The new company from Nir Zicherman and Michael Mignano aims to democratize access to learning the way their previous startup, Anchor, made it possible for anyone to create a podcast. In short, Oboe aims to create user-friendly interfaces that help people accomplish the task at hand. In this case, knowledge is augmented through a combination of AI technology, audio, and video.
“This idea is something that Mike and I have been talking about for a long time because we both have always felt that there is a really big opportunity in the education sector, more so than many people realize. It’s much bigger,” Zickerman said.
After leaving Spotify in October 2023 and after a short recharging period, Zickerman was ready to roll up his sleeves and build something new with a small team, he said in Anchor’s early days. He says it was similar. He also drew inspiration from his work at Spotify. Spotify has spent the past few years building its audiobook business and expanding into more markets.
“One of the big things that drew me to audiobooks, both as a business and as a product, was making incredibly high-quality content, including educational content and movies, accessible to more people than ever before. The idea was, “It’s really everywhere,” he points out.
Oboe is expanding its mission, but not through audiobooks.
Instead, the team is optimizing curriculum development and providing learning tools that are customized to how individual users learn most effectively, allowing more people to become what the company calls “active learning tools.” We envision a product that enables people to take part in a ‘learning journey’. .
The tools provided are available on a variety of platforms and include native applications as well as existing online learning services.
However, the startup intends to differentiate itself in this space by leveraging AI to customize curriculum materials and enable interactive experiences. For example, synthetic AI voices will be part of the product. Meanwhile, the combination of machine learning and Oboe’s backend architecture allows us to personalize the way materials are displayed, which will only improve over time.
Because AI is prone to hallucinations and quoting bad information, part of Oboe’s secret sauce is focused on ensuring content is accurate, high quality, and scalable. It will be done.
While Oboe relies in part on third-party underlying AI models, the team also does a “significant” amount of work in-house to build the data architecture and optimize the curriculum for each user, Zicherman said. says Mr.
“This product is not just one thin wrapper around the existing LLM. There’s a lot more going on under the hood,” he teases.
Additionally, you will be able to access the material in a variety of formats. When you can’t see the screen, such as while jogging or driving to work, you can tune in using your voice. They may also watch videos, use apps, and interact with websites.
Initially, Oboe will target only a few industries, from people learning to code on their own to college students supplementing their classroom experience with more materials. Although these debut courses will focus on learners above the kindergarten to 12-year-old age range, Oboe’s ultimate goal is to fulfill its mission of “making humanity smarter.” (A tall order, to be sure.) This includes not only students in K-12 and above, but also students who are upskilling for a career or are teaching themselves something new, such as playing a new instrument. This includes people who are learning. (Fun fact: Oboe is not only an instrument tuned by orchestras, but it is also the root of the Japanese word for “to learn.”)
New York-based Oboe is not yet ready to share many product details, but it has received funding from a number of investors, including those who have previously worked with Zickerman and Mignano. are procuring. Mr. Mignano will remain a full-time partner at Lightspeed, but will serve on the new company’s board of directors and support Mr. Zitcherman as CEO.
“In our co-founder roles at Oboe, Nil and I have worked closely to drive the company’s success through early strategy and product direction,” Mignano told TechCrunch. “My partners at Lightspeed have been extremely supportive of me as an investor and founder. “Nil and I were very happy to raise this first round from a number of great seed funds and angels (who previously supported us at Anchor).” added.
Oboe’s $4 million seed round was led by Eniac Ventures, the VC firm that led Anchor’s seed. The round also includes investments from Haystack, Factorial Capital, Homebrew, Offline Ventures, Scott Belsky, Kayvon Beykpour, Nikita Bier, Tim Ferriss, and Matt Lieber.
