Muhammed Khalid’s learning experience in school is not something he has fond memories of. A visual learner, he had struggled with traditional school methods and practices, yearning for tools that could cater to his individual needs and learning style. And Khalid knew he was far from alone to feel that way.
No wonder then that, a few years later, he set out to develop an ed-tech solution that would have helped him at that time and would undoubtedly benefit countless others, accommodating individual learning preferences and making education more accessible and engaging.
With no budget and a single month timeframe, Khalid and his team developed School Hack from his Dubai Marina apartment, fueled by pizzas and an unwavering determination. The new founder and CEO explains, “I just started building. I imagined myself ten years ago, when I was in school, and just made every single feature that I would have found useful to finish a paper or ace a test. I just made [School Hack] like I was making it for my teenage self.”
Muhammed Khalid, Founder and CEO of School Hack
In a mere 19 days, the team had their first minimum viable product (MVP). Four months after the platform’s launch in February 2023, they had one million subscribers.
Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3, the app offers a number of features designed to help students of all ages learn better and faster in simple, intuitive ways. DocuChat, for example, allows users to “talk” directly to documents, supporting comprehension and information retention. The Ask Anything chatbot provides real-time assistance, acting as a knowledgeable companion. The Plagiarism Report and Paraphrasing tools help students and schools maintain academic integrity and guarantee the production of original work.
Indeed, ensuring that School Hack is not perceived as a way for students to cheat is critical for Khalid who says, “[Students] are always going to find ways to cheat. The platform’s goal is not to promote cheating but rather to transform the way they study and learn from the outset. By providing a comprehensive learning experience, School Hack makes sure that students are not merely memorising answers but are actively engaging with and analysing the material.”
Modern marketing learnings
To attract Gen Z students, School Hack’s primary customer segment and a population prone to have fleeting interests, Khalid recognises that adopting the right marketing approach is crucial, starting with the app’s branding.
“There are no tougher critics in the world than kids and, to appeal to them, you need to be familiar with what they like,” Khalid says, adding that the name “School Hack'' was selected based on the insight that “Gen Z is used to catchy two-syllable words like Facebook and TikTok - something you can say to your friend real quick before the teacher catches you talking.” Similarly, School Hack’s logo design was inspired by TikTok’s own striking black and white logo.
However, a catchy name and strong logo are not the only factors behind School Hack’s massive and rapid popularity. What or who was it? Enter Ishaan Bhimjiyani, the platform’s 18-year-old Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) who played a crucial role in School Hack’s transition from secret tool to legitimate educational resource.
Bhimjiyani had already built a reputation as a self-made education influencer and manager in the UK when Khalid first met him. “I found him online and I couldn’t believe that he was only 18 and managing 12 other educational TikTokers,” Khalid explains. “He was 18 with his own company, which meant he understood entrepreneurship in his own unique way. The day after I saw his profile, I realised that his mum had investigated my Linkedin profile as well. I knew I wanted to work with him and just reached out to him and his mum.” Soon, Khalid and Bhimjiyani partnered up, not only providing a boost to the app’s development but also forging a strong bond, akin to brotherhood.
Lessons in fast growth
Meanwhile, Khalid had tapped into the gaming world, leveraging his established relationships with Minecraft’s influencers to generate free content on Discord and Twitch streams and gradually introduce students to the platform’s educational benefits. By spreading the word about School Hack in this highly engaged community, the team gained their first 100,000 subscribers in the first few weeks.
Committed to support transparent and positive student-teacher communication, Khalid and his team now aim to bring a new level of AI-integration to the whole education sector. This is why in May 2023, after schools had started to take notice, School Hack unveiled SHP 2.0, an AI-powered online portal for educational institutions enabling them to regulate and oversee students’ AI usage in a controlled environment.
Khalid’s ambition is for both students and schools to harness AI’s potential fully and responsibly, and for School Hack to transform the way students learn and interact with this powerful technology. Based on what he accomplished in only a few months, he seems well on his way to achieve these goals.
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