Kitchener startup headed to Google Demo Day

James Francis, left, and Travis Rantam, are two of the founders of Knowledgehook, a startup that has developed software that helps teachers teach math to students from kindergarten to Grade 10.

Knowledgehook    -Peter Lee,Record staff

By Terry Pender-Apr 28, 2016

KITCHENER — Travis Ratnam is preparing a five-minute pitch before a who's who of Silicon Valley investors early next month after his startup was selected for the prestigious Google Demo Day at the tech giant's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Ratnam is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Knowledgehook, a startup that has developed a web-based platform that helps teachers and students in math classes from kindergarten to Grade 10.

The Kitchener company is one of only two Canadian startups picked for the annual event on May 4 — the other is Halifax-based PACTA. Last year, Kitchener startup Bridgit was the winner at Google Demo Day with its mobile app for construction management.

"To be honest I did not know it was a big deal," Ratnam says. "Then I realized why it is a big deal — all the investors I had plans to eventually go to are at this event."

An early version of Knowledgehook's software was first used at Loretto College, a Catholic high school in Toronto, and math scores improved 14 per cent after one academic year. That grabbed the attention of the Toronto District Catholic School Board, and the startup hasn't looked back since.

The Knowledgehook platform was launched only seven months ago with 50 teachers. It was quickly adopted by thousands of others. The software is now used by about 4,000 teachers in Ontario at 11 school boards, including the Catholic and public systems in Toronto. It is being used at Jacob Hespeler Secondary School in Grade 9 applied math.

"And there are five more meetings coming up with other boards all over Ontario," Ratnam says.

Knowledgehook recently released free versions of its software to selected U.S. school boards as it seeds the market there, and prepares for major expansion. More than 1,000 teachers in the U.S. are using it now.

The rollout comes at a time when school boards across North America are under increasing pressure and scrutiny to improve education outcomes.

Essentially, Knowledgehook has gamified math teaching. The teaching tool includes individual and group assignments, homework and built-in rewards. Most important, the software helps teachers pinpoint the misconceptions students have about math, and helps them correct those misconceptions.

"If we can improve the quality of teaching we can improve outcomes," Ratnam says.

With ratios, students often confuse part-to-part and part-to-whole. They mix up the X and the Y axis on graphs. Understanding whole in fractions and per cents greater than 100 can be hard. Angles between arms are routinely confused with arm lengths. Area and perimeter get mistaken for each other.

There are about 2,000 misconceptions listed in teaching guides.

Experienced and specialized teachers often spot these misconceptions, but it is much more difficult for new teachers, or even math teachers who are teaching several different grades. Knowledgehook does that right away, for individuals and the entire class, and teachers then know exactly what areas need more explanation.

"You can actually pick up on patterns, the reasons why they are struggling," Ratnam says.

The 34-year-old University of Waterloo electrical engineering graduate actually struggled with math. Fortunately, his father was an experienced math tutor and patiently brought his son along. Eventually, Ratnam won the Governor General's Medal for his outstanding academic performance at Neil McNeil Catholic High School in Toronto.

After graduating from UW in 2006, Ratnam was offered jobs at Apple and Microsoft. He chose Microsoft and was assigned to the 2010 Microsoft Office team. While there, he solved the problem behind most calls to the support centre — recovering deleted work in Word, Office and PowerPoint.

"I read through a ton of customer complaints calls, I was obsessing over it, and I woke up one morning and it popped right into my head," Ratnam says.

Missing friends and family, he returned to Ontario and did his MBA at Queen's University. Ratnam wanted to create a startup that did a lot of social good. From his own experience, he knew about the impact a good tutor can have on a young person's life. So he was attracted to online tutoring.

He looked at tutoring apps for difficult university courses, but students were sharing accounts, so he scrapped that idea. After two more iterations, Ratnam made a pitch to the vice-principal at Loretto College, an all-girls school in Toronto. The vice-principal was intrigued, and approved the use of Knowledgehook.

That was the break Knowledgehook needed. Today, the startup is based out of the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo and the Communitech's Rev accelerator program in the Tannery building in downtown Kitchener.

The company's other founders are chief operating officer James Francis, product architect Arthur Lui and chief technology officer Lambo Jayapalan.

"It is really sophisticated," Ratnam says of the software. "Easy to use on the front, but a lot of code in the back end. The architecture is really complicated because when you start involving the principal, the board, the teacher, they are changing every year."

tpender@therecord.com