Zora Learning

I tried to build Zora 8 years ago when my little sister Sophie was in middle school. Like most middle schoolers, she hated reading. I wanted to build her a platform that showed her that reading could be fun by involving her in the storytelling and giving her the freedom to have the story be about whatever she was interest in, whether that was Minecraft or a zombie hunter named Sophie! 8 years ago, this platform was really hard to build because I would have had to have a pre-written bank of questions and bank of stories. I evaluated a lot of options at the time including Project Gutenberg but all of those stories were 100 years old (it takes 95 years for a book to enter public domain!) and no longer relatable. With GenAI, I realized the personalized, adaptive platform I envisioned for Sophie to teach her how to read was finally possible! Literacy is a huge problem in this country. I was shocked to learn that nearly 40% of students – 1.3 million children in the US – entering fourth grade can't read at a basic level (National Council on Teacher Quality) and 1 in 3 low-income children don't have any books at home (US Department of Education). This has huge repercussions down the line: 2/3 of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of the fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare (National Assessment of Adult Literacy) and 85% of all juvenile offenders have low literacy skills (Literacy Project Foundation). Among adults, 14% of U.S. adults (32M) are functionally illiterate (U.S. Department of Education). Literacy is such a huge unlock for future educational attainment, career trajectory, and quality of life! Unfortunately, because public school education is funded largely through property taxes, the literacy gap follows socioeconomic lines and the divide between the haves v. have-nots has only wider during the pandemic. Zora is named after legendary American author, Zora Neale Hurston, who inspired an entire generation of writers and learners, which is what I hope this app will do. I hope to build out more features for vocabulary banks over time to progressively teach children new words, allow children to see themselves as recurring heroes in their stories, and control the narrative of the stories! Looking for partners/collaborators on the B2B, children's content, education, public sector, non-profit literacy, research spaces!

When Nina told me her idea for a generative children’s book, I immediately saw how cool it could be. Generative models enable a new type of immersive entertainment experience - the potential for a kid, or even an adult, to get lost in a cycle of creative input, interactions with characters, and generated text, image, and videos. Had a lot of fun building the first version and very happy Nina is launching this to the world.

I love the founding story!