Openhouse

openhouse.study

About Us If you think back to your school or college days, the best memories you have are those with your friends! Your first day in college, your best friend, your dorms, hanging in the corridors, your school canteen, all-nighters before exams, and chilling for weeks after exams - our school lives are filled with so many awesome interactions, experiences, and memories. In each of them, you’re with a friend, never alone! Humans always have, and will always continue to learn from one another. We are a social learning platform that allows us to learn the way we learn best - socially. Founded by Stanford grads, Openhouse is backed by Accel and Matrix Partners. We have started building a stellar team from companies like Microsoft, Uber, etc. We are headquartered in Bangalore. Our Approach COVID-19 has reshaped every aspect of our lives, and education is no exception. The world is learning to learn online, but the main reason why online education hasn’t skyrocketed is that all platforms are designed to simply deliver content (whether pre-recorded or live). Online learning doesn’t feel natural, warm, or relatable. Taking an analogy from the gaming world, edtech so far consists of single-player games designed only for access but not engagement and retention. The only actions one can take are content consumption and practice via multiple-choice questions. We, on the contrary, think education is an immersive multiplayer experience! If our children are going to learn online, we will have to make it social. That’s how learning happens best. We believe we’re amongst the first few companies in the world trying to push the boundaries of edtech to a new era of highly social and community-driven learning. Our Culture The best classrooms have an awesome learning culture. We think of our organization as one large classroom, where each of us is a student trying to learn from and teach one another. We have all sorts of people here: humanists, tech junkies, educationists, designers, and wannabe designers! Since we are a small organization, we function like a tight-knit family where we care for each other’s work but also for each other’s lives. We’ve often heard that the first 50 team members set the culture and pace of an organization, which is why we take time and carefully pick our team. If you grab a sneak peek into our tribe, you’d find us to be super real. We are all encouraged to call a spade a spade, even if this means disappointing a peer. Coming up with prospective solutions is good, but we care about how well the experience is crafted - aesthetics do matter. Think of Disneyland, Nike, Airbnb, WeWork, Apple: the best folks know not only how to deliver a product/service but also make it beautiful. Most importantly, we are all students! Right across the team, from engineering to product, community to classroom, we think of how we’d feel if we were students – and this reminds us to keep learning and growing!