Harry Fazzone and his co-founders are no strangers to the trials and tribulations of AP exams. These tests, administered at the end of Advanced Placement courses, assess high school students on not only their knowledge of course content, but also their ability to memorize essay formats and writing techniques.
Now a junior at Duke University, Fazzone said he still remembers cramming with his classmates before exams, attempting to recall both information and essay styles.
To prevent others from having similarly stressful experiences, Fazzone decided to create a way for students to more effectively study for AP exams. He did so by packaging trusted content from existing creators on the internet to create easy-to-use study materials. Alongside co-founders Neil Shah, Anish Anne and Steven Goetz, Fazzone launched DeAP Learning Labs—soon to be renamed Ember Learning—which is a platform on which high school students can prepare for exams by simulating chats with online content creators.
“Some people have said, ‘Hey, I didn’t really understand how to write an SAQ [(short answer question)],’ which is one of the AP history essays,” said Fazzone, who is the CEO of the budding startup. But after using Ember Learning, those same people learn “the formula” and can do it every time—and quickly.
Ember Learning is a part of this year’s Launch Chapel Hill cohort, which is an accelerator program for early-stage startups (GrepBeat recently covered fellow cohort members Jobbly and SolveCircle). Shah said the program has helped them refine their pitch deck and create a five-year plan for the company, and Ember Learning is now looking to raise money.
“Over the last couple months when it’s been really busy and just really hectic, we had kind of lost sight of where we’re trying to go in the next five years,” Shah said. “So, Launch really helped us establish that.”
The founders launched their first product in 2023, providing content for 14 AP courses. Each course’s page includes a course guide and accompanying chatbot.
The chatbot can answer questions, and will pull up videos with timestamps from any of the seven content creators that Ember Learning has partnered with, such as Jacob Clifford and Heimler’s History (both known names in the AP exam prep space). The chatbot also searches the transcripts of those creators’ videos to produce concise answers, and can provide suggestions for questions to ask. By relying on these trusted creators rather than, say, ChatGPT, the startup guarnatees that students are accessing accurate information.
Students also can access the skills workshop, which provides guidance on the AP essay formats.
The founders will be launching their second product in August, this time geared toward teachers. This product uses AI to grade the essays teachers assign, based on whatever rubric the teachers upload.
The product, called Ember, was created after the founders saw how much time teachers were spending on the DeAP platform. DeAP has a feature where students can upload their essays to be graded with the AP rubric, and Fazzone said some teachers were using that to grade their students’ essays, in some cases spending up to 12 hours per week with the tool.
Ember, the new product, enables teachers to supply their own rubrics, and also allows students to upload their essays directly to the site. This leads to instant grading, which reduces a significant burden for teachers.
“We can streamline a lot of the work they have to do in their classroom, because grading essays is one of the biggest uses of time for teachers,” Fazzone said.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Ember Learning
Co-Founders: Harry Fazzone (CEO), Anish Anne (CTO), Neil Shah (COO), Steven Goetz
Founded: 2023
Location: Raleigh
Website: deaplearning.org & emberlearning.org
Funding: Bootstrapped, seeking funding
Size of team: 15
Ember Learning’s revenue comes primarily from the content creators they partner with, who pay for their content to be featured on the platform. Students, meanwhile, can use up to 350 credits—which amounts to 350 chat entries—per week for free. To use more credits, they can purchase subscriptions.
For at least the first few months using the Ember tool, teachers will have access to the platform for free. Fazzone said the company hopes to reach 5,000 teachers this year, as well as implement additional services such as quiz and short-answer grading.
Another source of revenue for the startup comes in the form of “Ultimate Review Packets,“ which are available to students at $25 apiece. Each packet contains videos and practice PDFs, as well as a chatbot that can answer specific questions related to the packet’s content.
Altogether, the total package of Ember Learning’s offerings is designed to make exam prep more focused and less stressful for students and teachers alike. And as an added bonus, the founders believe they’ve created a more fun and engaging process.
“I really do think that we will make learning more enjoyable for teachers and students,” Goetz said in an email.
The founders invite potential investors or those interested in joining the team to reach out to them at hello@emberlearning.org.
