Why we lead with education

For the last two to three years the academic space has been bogged down by the use of large language models in the classroom, and it has left students less engaged and less connected to the material they are supposed to be reading. It is easy to read that as a reason to keep AI out of school. We think it is the opposite.

The same technology that let students skip the reading can be used to pull them back into it. So, we built Timethos, an educational aid where a student learns interactively, one on one, and at their own pace, from the very people behind the material.

How Timethos works

A teacher sends us their syllabus and all the readings their students are assigned, and we build a five to twenty minute lesson augmentation for every one. After an economics class reads Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, for example, the student sits down for a guided conversation with Adam Smith about the parts they found confusing, how his ideas apply to modern news, and what they did and did not agree with.

• ›It is an aid to the reading, not a replacement for it. The whole point is to get students deeper into the material, not around it.
• ›It is configurable. A teacher can leave the conversation open, require that it hit certain points before it resolves, or flip it around so the figure teaches and asks the student clarifying questions.
• ›The educator portal shows a teacher the confusions their whole class shares, the points the class understands well, and the interesting topics students raised, so the next lecture can start exactly where it should.

We are an aid to the reading, not a replacement for it.

One mission, four surfaces

Education is the flagship, but it is one of four ways we bring history close. There is Yap Royale, a game for anyone who loves history and debate, with a daily challenge, a watch mode, and a topic dungeon to sharpen your arguments. There are exhibits for museums, so a visitor can talk to the person an exhibit is actually about. And there is a studio for creators making podcasts, videos, and social content. So, we did not set out to build four products. We set out to make history accessible to anyone who can hold a conversation, and it turned out that meant meeting people in four different places.

History belongs to everyone, and almost no one gets to meet it. That is the half of the sentence we are here to change, and the classroom is where we are starting.