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Y Combinator W12 · ImagineK12 · 2012

YC Demo Day

Three guys, a dog and a dream got two minutes on stage. Before it, Paul Graham sat with us and wrote our Demo Day script on a whiteboard: three beats, one demo, one quote. This is that whiteboard, the script it became, the deck, and the video.

Paul Graham's handwritten whiteboard outline for TapToLearn's YC Demo Day pitch
Paul Graham's whiteboard, March 2012
The whiteboard, transcribed
  • TAP TO LEARN:
  • GENUINELY EDUCATIONAL GAMES
  • 1. GAME MARKET
  • "EDU" GAMES: START W/ GAMES, SPRAY ON EDU
  • TTL: START W/ LESSONS, GAMIFY THEM
  • (MATH DEMO)
  • 2. SOUNDS BENEVOLENT
  • DOES IT MAKE MONEY?
  • PEOPLE LOVE OUR STUFF: NOW GET 1/4M DL / WK
  • $500K REVENUE, 10% OF TOP 100
  • 3. JUST THE BEGINNING
  • HOW PEOPLE WILL LEARN → HOW THEY FEEL
  • INVESTOR QUOTE: KHAN — WORKS OUT
  • (sketch: a Learn ↔ Play axis — games start at Play and drift toward Learn; TapToLearn starts at Learn and moves to Play)
The pitch

Watch it

The deck · 24 slides

The deck scroll →

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↓ Download the deck (PDF)
The script

Every word I said

ImagineK12 Demo Day · May 1, 2012

"Hi, my name is Roby, and here is my story."

Hi, My name is Roby and here is my story.

Back in school I was not a very good student.

And that’s not my picture, but I probably felt that way too about my studies.

Like a lot of other kids I was very good at playing games.

Guess what, that actually helped me, because from games I learnt the value of practice and trying harder.

I became a better learner, a better student.

By the time I graduated I had a Gold Medal in Engineering at the University.

Since then I have been a teacher for the last 12 years, teaching high school math and college level programming courses.

As a teacher I saw that students had the same problems I had, very low attention spans.

Its also the most difficult thing in the world to get kids to practice their concepts, and its only when you practice that you get to mastery.

On the other hand, kids practice and play games endlessly, Before the age of 21 most kids would have played over 10,000 hours of games. 10,000 hours – that’s the exact same number of hours that a kid would spend in school till graduation if he had perfect attendance.

But wait, Games are powerful. And there are useful things that kids are learning from games.

Great Persistence, they never give up.

They have No Fear for Failure.

They give great attention to detail and they are creatively solving problems.

All of these skills would actually make them better learners.

Here is where the problem lies.

Kids do not have to take what they learn from games and apply it in Real life.

That is what TapToLearn is For.

AT TapToLearn, we are creating that bridge between what kids learn in games and apply to Education

How are we doing this.

At TapToLearn we have figured out how to make Educational Games real FUN.

In the last 2 years, our team have built over 40 apps and have become experts in turning Lessons into Games, Now all our lessons have come together to complete an entire curriculum for elementary Math.

Presenting Tiny Chicken, our newest Game, a Farmville for Math.

Let me show you a quick demo,

Tiny chicken our hero is Home Alone, where tiny uses Math to help the Sheep Across the River using Addition

Helps the Cow by fixing the Number Bridge ,

Shoots down meteors using Factorization

Practice Ninja Skills using Prime Numbers

Learns about Currency to Run the Farmers Market

and Learns Time by helping the Old Rooster Set his Alarm

While kids are having fun playing our games, they are also practicing their Math.

For Parents we provide detailed Activity,

What He is Learning using these games and What He is Good at Already.

Parents Love This and are they are willing to pay for this.

We’ve made over half a million Dollars in Revenue from just the App Store with Zero Marketing.

We have been growing since the past year and now we are really taking off, with over 2 Million downloads, we are now growing at over a hundred thousand downloads a week.

Our users aren’t sitting idle either, they spent 250,000 thousand minutes learning using our apps yesterday, and that number is only going up.

And where are we going with this, Hey we are only getting started.

Fun Engaging Games are the way all kids will learning in the future.

Let me be clear, We are more than a One Off Game,

We already cover topics of english grammar, spelling and math.

Our games are not random, our games fit together naturally as a child is learning, like a curriculum fits together by Age, Subject and Skill Level.

TapToLearn is a Service that Kids and Parents interact with for years.

And this is a Worldwide Opportunity, with Billions of Children and Parents spending Billions of Dollars on this.

And we are just the team to be the major player in this large market. Our Founder team of me, Avinash and Sreejit have been working together for the last 5 years. TapToLearn is the first startup that did yCombinator and ImagineK12 programs at the same time. We have grown our team to 12 people now, we are backed some really great investors including one of the largest Gaming Companies on iOS.

Finally, Fun Learning Games to Educate a Billion People, that’s the opportunity represented by TapToLearn. That is why you should come and talk to us about our Seed Round.

— Roby
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Find me at the SPC office in Bengaluru, usually Wednesdays. Coffee, a walk, hacking user acquisition — all yes.

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I'm Roby
games · learning · the company
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