The Duolingo Playbook: How Outsmart Education's A-Team Raised $36M to Disrupt Higher Education

Company & Team Introduction

Outsmart Education is a New York-based EdTech venture founded in 2024, built to be a direct challenger to the foundational pillars of American higher education. The company's mission is to tackle the systemic crisis of soaring tuition costs and a staggering $1.81 trillion in national student loan debt.

• Jorge Mazal (Co-founder & CEO): The former Chief Product Officer at Duolingo, Mazal architected the platform's resurgence, leading to a 4.5x increase in daily active users. His experience is centered on obsessive product quality and user engagement.

• Gina Gotthilf (Co-founder & CMO): As the former VP of Marketing and Growth at Duolingo, Gotthilf was the driving force behind scaling its user base from 3 million to an immense 200 million. Her expertise lies in viral growth and brand storytelling.

• Daniel Falabella (Co-founder & CPO): A former GM and VP of Product at Duolingo, Falabella specialized in the metagame mechanics and retention loops that solve the motivation challenges plaguing online learning.

Product Overview

Outsmart is building an "AI-powered higher ed system" designed to fundamentally restructure the college experience. Where traditional universities are rigid and geographically bound, Outsmart aims to deliver true personalization, infinite patience, and 24/7 availability without diluting quality.

Drawing from the founders' experience at Duolingo and Zynga, the platform's core focus is on the science of motivation. The application of AI will be directed at hyper-personalizing the motivational mechanics—like progress visualization, streaks, and leaderboards—that create a "completion compulsion" and drive student success.

A crucial part of the strategy is the public launch slated for 2026. This extended stealth period, backed by significant capital, strongly suggests the company is tackling the most difficult challenge first: accreditation. By launching as a fully legitimate, degree-granting institution, Outsmart can compete directly with established universities from day one.

Market Opportunity

Outsmart is launching into a market defined by a painful paradox: higher education is a societal necessity that is increasingly economically inaccessible. This has created a generational opportunity for innovation.

The problem is stark. For the 2024-2025 academic year, the average total annual cost of attendance ranged from $29,910 for in-state public colleges to $62,990 for private institutions. This has fueled the $1.81 trillion student debt crisis.

This urgent need is matched by a massive commercial opportunity. The U.S. EdTech market was valued at over $74 billion in 2024 and is projected to exceed $236 billion by 2033. Outsmart is positioned at the perfect intersection of a massive, underserved consumer base and a well-funded market ready to support a real alternative.

Business Model & Traction

Outsmart's strategy will almost certainly revolve around a subscription-based, direct-to-consumer "Education-as-a-Service" (EaaS) model. This approach provides financial predictability, enables massive scalability, and fosters a direct relationship with the student.

Despite being two years from its consumer launch, Outsmart is already showing compelling signs of traction. Remarkably, the company is generating $1M to $10M in estimated annual revenue while in stealth mode. This strongly implies a parallel B2B strategy is already in motion, likely through paid pilot programs or corporate partnerships that validate the curriculum and generate early income.

Competitors

While the EdTech market includes hundreds of active competitors, most are focused on providing point solutions within the existing system. Outsmart's identified top competitors—TeamLease Edtech, Numerade, and StudySmarter—are supplemental tools that help students succeed in traditional college, not instead of it.

This reframes the competitive analysis entirely. Outsmart's true competition is not other EdTech apps; it's the vast landscape of mid-tier traditional public and private universities. Its strategic challenge is to prove that its model can deliver a high-quality, accredited education at a fraction of the cost and with far greater flexibility than the institutions that have dominated for centuries.

Funding

Outsmart has secured an exceptionally large $36.4M war chest across two Seed rounds—a remarkable feat for a pre-product company that signals immense market conviction.

• November 2024: A $13M Seed round led by Khosla Ventures.

• September 2025: A $23.4M Seed round co-led by DST Global and Forerunner.

This is not a typical seed investment. This capital provides a crucial multi-year runway to navigate the complex and expensive accreditation process, building a defensible moat that smaller competitors cannot cross.