Announcing the Matygo Alpha

It has been a long time coming, but Matygo is finally ready to release some software. It’s small, young, and only does a few basic things but we’re proud of it. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Over the last half year we’ve done a lot more than just work on code. We’ve also made  significant strides towards defining ourselves as a company, establishing what we stand for, what we want to create and why. We’d like to share some of that here as part of the launch.

What we are doing, part 1

We have some pretty ambitious goals for Matygo that go far beyond the tutor profiles we’re currently launching. I won’t give timelines or product details - but I will let you in on our vision. You can infer the middle bits.

Today, we are launching the first iteration of our alpha. It is a simple platform for tutors to publish information about themselves and their teaching at a fixed, custom url. A lot of tutors still don’t have a web presence, and we hope to solve that problem. The alpha has an obviously OS-inspired interface and a couple cool features that we haven’t seen in many web apps before. If you’re a tutor and would like to try out the alpha for free, contact Cam and we’ll hook you up with an account.

We’ll be gathering feedback and will continue to improve the alpha based on that feedback - and hopefully pretty quickly. If there’s a feature you’d like to see just send us a message or mention something in the feedback forum. We’ll get back to you.

Why we are doing it

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”

—DANIEL BURNHAM, CHICAGO ARCHITECT. (1846-1912)

There’s a business concept called a BHAG that forces Burnham’s point - make a Big Hairy Audacious Goal and believe in it. Ours is to build the first global education ecosystem. We’ve been able to distill that into a mission: Deliver the World Education.

But why? Why start a company at all?

People have always started corporations to make money. The purpose of a ‘for profit’ corporation is exactly what the name implies.

On the other hand, people have always started non-profits not for money but for good. ‘Good’ is a bit slippery - for some people supporting the National Rifle Association is good - but in all cases the people involved with non-profits are working to bring about some positive change they believe in. They are working for social, not financial, equity.

We believe that a new generation of ‘post-capitalist’ organizations are being founded that synthesize these approaches, and Matygo intends to be a pioneer.

The problem we are faced as ambitious young founders is that we want everything; we seek both financial and social equity. Our parent’s generation of entrepreneurs addressed this using a model where first you make a pile of money and then give it away (an approach perfected by Bill Gates). But we don’t want to wait for a future, that may or may not exist, to make a positive change. We would rather build an organization that synthesizes the ‘for good’ and ‘for profit’ approaches from the start; a sustainable model that produces both financial and social equity in a yin-yang of stability and elegance.

As entrepreneurs we realize that corporations, at least when they’re started, are in fact meant to be achievement, not money per se, generating machines. In a past where money = achievement, the for profit model thus made sense. But achievement is a complex and layered thing; we believe it means making a positive change, as simple and nebulous as that. That is why we are starting a company - to achieve great things.

So that answers the first question. Why are we intent on delivering education? Because of stories like this, the story of a true hacker:

“Some people see lemons and make lemonade. William Kamkwamba saw wind and made a windmill.

This might not seem like a mighty feat. But Kamkwamba, who grew up in Masitala, a tiny rural farming village off the grid in Malawi, was 14 years old in 2001 when he spotted a photo of a windmill in a U.S. textbook one day. He decided to make one, hacking together a contraption from strips of PVC pipe, rusty car and bicycle parts and blue gum trees.

Though he ultimately had big designs for his creation, all he really wanted to do initially was power a small bulb in his bedroom so he could stay up and read past sunset.

But one windmill has turned into three, which now generate enough electricity to light several bulbs in his family’s house, power radios and a TV, charge his neighbors’ cellphones and pump water for the village’s fields and household use.”

- Wired http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/kamwamba-windmill/

William, a poor, uneducated (his parents couldn’t afford tuition), teenaged farmer saw a picture and built a real, electricity-producing windmill using what any western person would call garbage. Genius is an understatement. The raw intelligence in the developing world, never given a chance to be nurtured, is tragic. It’s one of the world’s greatest tragedies. The cure for cancer could be simmering inside the mind of a young african like William, but never given the chance to be realized. Education is all about helping people realize their own potential, and there is so much human potential still unrealized.

To make a difference you have to pick something you want to change and believe in your ability to do it. We’ve picked education. The founders of Matygo are very familiar with formal education - we each have ~20 years of experience with it (we’re in our mid 20s and two of us are still students). None of us would be where we are without it, it has empowered us in very tangible ways. We support formal education, but it is also important to note that William’s story is one of an autodidact - it was his independent love of reading that gave rise to both his problem and his solution. This broad view of education as an empowering dissemination of knowledge in many forms is what Matygo hopes to deliver. We believe that, in the long-term, education can prevent wars, cure diseases and be a driving force behind ending extreme poverty. That’s something we can get behind.

What we are doing, part 2

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

- ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY. (1900 - 1944)

This launch has two parts: First, we are unveiling our alpha web app. Second, we are making this announcement, laying the groundwork for the ‘for good’ side of our business.

On our homepage there is a link to a non-profit organization we have partnered with called uEnd. uEnd is dedicated to enabling everyday people to make small positive contributions to important development projects around the world. They are a ‘non-profit brokerage’, they do project discovery, due diligence, provide an easy way to make contributions online, and flow 100% of donations made through their site to the projects. They have a fantastic selection of education initiatives and supporting these projects will be our first step in growing the charitable side of our business.

Our alpha currently produces no revenue, which makes a claim of donating part of our revenue seem a bit misleading. However, we expect to have multiple revenue streams in our Beta and have promised to contribute a non-trivial portion of our revenue to the uEnd projects as soon as revenue exists. Moreover, we hope to include our interested users in the decision making process regarding which projects we support (please let us know if this interests you). We feel this accurately reflects our intention of growing the ‘for profit’ and ‘for good’ sides our of business in unison. That said, as a corporation, we have subscribed to uPowered - a regular monthly donation to support running the uEnd organization - if only to make a small but tangible move towards putting our money where our mouth is.

We hope you enjoy the Matygo alpha.

- Paul, Joe, and Cam