The Ledger
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Khan: 15 to 60 minutes weekly on Khan Academy prevented COVID learning loss
“What we saw in twenty-twenty-one is that the students who put in an average of 15 minutes on Khan Academy a week in a school setting, they actually saw no COVID learning loss, And that students who put in 30 to 60 minutes, they accelerated almost 40% faster th…”
Khan: Immersive AI 'holodeck' simulations are 3 to 5 years away
“You know, there's a world now where you can talk to historical characters, and we're probably three to five years away where you could share a room with Benjamin Franklin or Julius Caesar or Cleopatra and immerse yourself. It'll, it'll be literally the holodec…”
Khan: AI tutoring will help Khan Academy achieve two-sigma learning gains
“Essentially, old Khan Academy or base Khan Academy trying to get to that first standard deviation. And, but now with the AI, we can go to that second standard deviation.”
Only non-profits stay true to a social bottom line long-term
“While I was at a hedge fund, I saw how much capital structure and incentives can really drive what an organization does. And the only organizations that really do stay true to some social bottom line over long periods of time are nonprofits.”
Khan: Only nonprofits stay true to a social mission long-term
“The only organizations that really do stay true to some social bottom line over long periods of time are nonprofits.”
Khan: Generative AI will either 10x Khan Academy or make it irrelevant
“Look, this is a transformational technology. This is one of these things where it's either going to allow us to magnify our impact by an order of magnitude, or it might make us irrelevant.”
Google and the Gates Foundation each granted Khan Academy $2 million in 2010
“And by fall of 2010, both the Google and the Gates Foundation each gave about two million dollars. So we had a four million dollar initial funding for that first two years to hire up a team, internationalize, and start scaling Khan Academy.”
Khan: Foundational math video lessons are universally applicable and evergreen
“If once you have a good explanation of adding fractions with unlike denominators, pretty much everyone in the world could use it. And you don't really have to refresh it unless you figure out a better way of explaining adding fractions with unlike, unlike deno…”
Khan: Real learning requires interactive exercises with feedback, not just videos
“Videos are nice, and I want to keep making videos. I really enjoy that. I want to translate it into the languages of the world. But the real learning happens when students are able to work on exercises, get immediate feedback. Ideally, teachers and parents can…”
Khan: Asynchronous learning relies on student trust in a consistent instructor
“Education, even when it's done in this kind of distance way or asynchronous, you have to really trust your teacher. You have to trust that they're going to get me to some place that I know is going to be insightful and there's going to be an aha moment.”
Khan: Khanmigo costs $10 to $15 per month per user to run
“Conmigo has a very real marginal cost to it. It costs on the order of let's call it 10 to 15 dollars per month.”
Khan would consider a for-profit spin-out if foundation funding dried up
“The only reason That I could ever see trying to do some type of spin out or a wholly owned sub that's, is for some reason, if we're not getting the risk capital from the foundations, or we can't create a flywheel of sustainability, then maybe certain pieces of…”
Khan: Khan Academy costs $60M to $70M annually to operate
“It costs On the order of 60, seventy million a year to run Khan Academy, both to, you know, just our server costs are six, seven million dollars a year, and then obviously all of the engineers, et cetera”
Real learning requires interactive exercises with immediate feedback, not just videos
“Videos are nice and I want to keep making videos. I really enjoy that. I want to translate it into the languages of the world, but the real learning happens when students are able to work on exercises, get immediate feedback.”
Ann Doerr wired Sal Khan $100,000 after their first lunch meeting
“10 minutes later, I'm driving into my driveway, and I get a text message from Ann, and it says, you really need to be supporting yourself. I've just wired you a 100,000 dollars.”
Foundational math and science lessons are evergreen universal content
“And I started to realize, you know, this type of thing, especially math, and I was doing math and I started doing some physics and chemistry and biology as well. It's pretty evergreen content. If once you have a good explanation of adding fractions with unlike…”
Philanthropist Ann Doerr wired Sal Khan $100,000 to cover his living expenses
“I'm driving into my driveway, and I get a text message from Ann, and it says, you really need to be supporting yourself. I've just wired you a 100,000 dollars.”
How remote tutoring moved Sal Khan's cousin from remedial to advanced math
“And the same Nadia who was only a few months ago put into a remedial class was now put into an advanced math class.”
The College Board pays Khan Academy to create free SAT prep
“Over time, the relationship has evolved where they actually pay us resources to create free test prep which is, you know, that's the type of revenue I love because it's, it helps sustain us, but it's free to the student.”
Khan Academy reached hundreds of thousands of regular users by 2009
“And by 2007, 2008, it was in the tens of thousands of people. And by 2009, it was in the hundreds of thousands of people were using it on our, on a regular basis.”
Khan Academy was rejected by roughly 20 major foundations before securing funding
“By this point, have been rejected by so many major foundations, probably about 20 of them,”
Khan: 1M district students pay Khan Academy roughly $10 annually
“We now have about a million students in districts where they're paying on the order of about 10 dollars per student per year, To get all of these other things.”
Khan: Khan Academy daily usage surged from 30M to 90M minutes in March 2020
“Our traffic went from about thirty million learning minutes per day to about ninety million learning minutes per day, pretty much within that week.”
Khan: Khanmigo Deploys a Second AI to Flag Safety Issues to Parents
“We have a second artificial intelligence that monitors conversations with the main artificial intelligence. And if any of those conversations go into a gray zone then it actively notifies the parents and the teachers that, hey, you should take a look at this c…”
Khan: Khanmigo AI evaluates math reasoning by comparing hidden expected steps
“One of the things we've done to make it more robust on the math side is when a student presents their math to the AI saying, hey, I think this is the next step, the AI behind the scenes comes up with what it thinks are reasonable responses from the student. It…”
Khan Academy gave 40 to 50 employees early access to GPT-4
“The first thing we did is we sat in an org-wide NDA, and I said, hey, how many folks in the organization can I get, we give access to? And eventually we got about 40 or 50 folks in our organization to get access to GPT-IV.”
If I became a billionaire, I would have funded Khan Academy anyway
“And anything above that, if I did become a billionaire, I frankly would have donated it to an effort like Khan Academy. So you might as well just cut out the middleman, you know, just time shift it and work on it.”
Khan initially burned $5K monthly in savings while raising hundreds in donations
“I did have this little donate button on, on my website, and there were people starting to donate. It was amounting to a few hundred dollars every month. If it was anyone listening, you'll thank you for that, but it But we were digging into our savings about fi…”
Khan Academy had hundreds of thousands of regular users by 2009
“By fall of 2009, there were several 100,000 folks who were using The stuff I was making on a regular basis.”
COVID-19 surged Khan Academy's monthly traffic from 20M to 30M students
“You know, we normally see about, pre-COVID, it was about twenty million students were coming per month, and that increased to thirty million, and then they were also spending 50% more
Time on the site.
and then, you know, our registrations went through the ro…”
Sal Khan personally produces almost all Khan Academy math and science videos
“Now, you know, we don't have a lot of folks making videos. I still make A lot of them. I pretty much make all of the math and science video. And then we have a few other folks who are doing some history videos and some language arts videos.”
The College Board pays Khan Academy to create free SAT prep
“Over time, the relationship has evolved where they actually pay us resources to create free test prep which is, you know, that's the type of revenue I love because it's, it helps sustain us, but it's free to the student.”
Khan Academy generates $5M from individual donors averaging $20 to $30
“About five million of our funding comes from a few 100,000 people donating on average 20, 30 dollars”
Khan Academy was initially rejected by roughly 20 major foundations
“By this point have been rejected by so many major foundations, probably about 20 of them.”
Google and the Gates Foundation granted $4M to Khan Academy in 2010
“And by fall of 2010, both the Google and the Gates Foundation each gave about two million dollars. So we had a four million dollar initial funding for that first two years to hire up a team, internationalize, and start scaling Khan Academy.”