Capti

Before the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Education reported that 60% (33M) of K-12 students were reading below the proficient level. Such students were struggling to keep up with the curriculum and were falling behind in all subjects that required reading. To make things worse, the pandemic caused a massive disruption in education, with many students skipping a year or more of schooling and not developing the foundational reading skills that are the steppingstones to proficient reading. A similar problem can be observed in schools worldwide, where problems are further exacerbated by poverty, wars, and socio-economic barriers.

Teachers use reading assessments and interventions to improve reading. Intervention programs provide canned reading materials and exercises, which are usually automatically personalized for students’ skills. However, the one thing all such interventions have in common is that their reading materials have little or nothing to do with most K-12 curricula used in schools.

The result of this “curricular misalignment” is that students who are already struggling with their regular reading assignments are asked to devote extra time to working with mostly unrelated content. While this may help improve their reading skills, it also overwhelms students and distracts them from the required curriculum. That is, if teachers and students even can devote extra time. Consequently, instead of catching up with the curriculum, students fall further behind.

We learned that teachers are often in a catch-22, when deciding if they should focus on a foundational reading intervention that does not align with curriculum, or if they should devote time to reviewing classroom content. There is a strong demand for an intervention that will allow teachers to do both and seamlessly personalize learning for each student regardless of their ability. However, since all existing reading interventions are using their own canned content, it is impossible for them to align their content with all the curricula used in schools, because the curricula often differ school to school and are constantly changing.

We started out as an assistive technology company aiming to accommodate students with diverse needs. Our Capti Accommodate product helps teachers and students to turn any text into an audiobook, make texts accessible, and utilize a variety of active reading and reference tools. As we brought it to market, we learned that educators yearn for a more complete solution. Having done 100+ discovery interviews, we formulated the blueprint for a “perfect reading solution” that can Assess, Advance, and Accommodate reading for students of all abilities. 

Our solution is Capti – an AI-powered adaptive literacy platform that helps teachers to: 1) Assess students to identify the areas of need, inform instruction, and monitor progress with innovative research-based reading diagnostics from ETS; 2) Advance students by administering proven reading exercises that we automatically create from any content to make them personalized and curriculum-aligned; and 3) Accommodate reading to help students keep up by turning any text into an audiobook and personalizing accessibility to the unique needs of the students.

We can sell the above three components as separate products, but when combined in an integrated solution, the components will work together by exchanging information and automatically personalizing learning for each student to promote equitable and effective literacy learning experiences for students.

Capti is a web app and a mobile app that works across devices. It uses a combination of machine learning, natural language processing, and innovative algorithms to personalize learning for all students, and especially those who have fallen behind in reading and other classes. Capti is best suited and is already used in English speaking countries such as U.S., U.K., Australia, India, etc. It is also useful for 1B people learning English worldwide. It can be used in person and remotely, synchronously, and asynchronously, in teacher lead and in independent learning.

Capti is for students in Grades 3-12 who have not yet mastered foundational reading skills. In K-2, students are learning to read and in Grades 3+ are reading to learn. Based on numerous teacher interviews and customer interactions, we learned that Capti is most useful to all students in Gr. 3-5, and it is most relevant for students who are struggling with reading in Gr. 6-12. Capti Assess and Advance assumes that students are, at least, capable of basic word recognition and decoding. Capti Accommodate can help students to listen to text in a variety of languages even if students cannot read all of that text.

Our value propositions include: 

• Boosting literacy and learning for students of all abilities
• Maximizing instructional impact in less time for teachers
• Addressing compliance and improving equity for leadership

We expect the following proximal outcomes: 1) improved foundational reading skills; 2) improved fluency/reading comprehension; and 3) higher engagement in intervention activities.

We expect the following distal outcomes: 1) improved language proficiency, 2) increased achievement in content areas; 3) higher graduation rates and 4) better college/career readiness.

We are a team of driven Ukrainian immigrants in the U.S. and Ukrainian nationals in Ukraine (relocated) who are hellbent on making the world a better place by helping address a critical problems in education — the ever-widening achievement gap in reading and a lack of equity in education. 

In the U.S., we work with rural, suburban, and urban districts that have a wide variety of need. We have learned English, we have taught English, and we have customers worldwide. We use participatory design to engage teachers and students in co-designing the product and evaluating its usability at different stages of R&D. We use the Lean Startup and Agile Scrum methodology to shape the R&D process, maximize stakeholder participation, and identify issues early in the design process.  Where we lack capacity, we partner with world-class companies and researchers like Educational Testing Service (ETS) and numerous top ranked literacy researchers and institutions.

We have and we continue building an amazing product that has a massive potential for impact in the U.S. and worldwide. However, we would like to get there sooner and maximize our impact. With Solves’ help, we would like to:

• Fundraise, recruit, hire, and train staff to take Capti to the next level
• Develop new and refine existing partnerships that will help scale Capti
• Get expert guidance on the strategy for market entry and expansion
• Develop and implement measures that will help us track our impact
• Gain exposure to accelerate dissemination of our product

Capti is unique in that it: 1) provides an adaptive multistage diagnostic assessment that is deeper, more accurate, more engaging, and faster than anything in the market (as documented by ETS published research); 2) empower teachers to create curriculum-aligned intervention exercises from any texts automatically instead of having to decide between intervention and content; and 3) scaffold learning with patented playlists and wide variety of active reading and reference tools, and unique accommodations, including upcoming voice-over and personalized text simplification features.

All of the above innovations have been developed with support of U.S. Small Business Innovation Research grants, which are highly competitive and fund high risk - high reward projects that focus on technical innovation and are peer-reviewed by domain experts. All of the above innovations are transformational in that they address a significant need. Most have already been validated in rigorous research studies. The use of Capti product suite will lead to better outcomes for students and improve their graduation rates. This will, in turn, provide students with more opportunities for continued education and employment.

Over the next year, we would like to serve 400k students. Among these students, we would like to help 5% of students to get to their expected grade-level reading proficiency.

Over the next 5 years, we would like to serve 10 Million students. Among these students, our goal is to raise reading proficiency for all students, specifically we aim to get 10% more student to become proficient in reading, raise highschool graduation rates by 5%, and help 10% more students continue to college.

The following are the measurable indicators of progress:

• Total number of students served
• Percent of student users on free and reduced lunches
• Growth in foundational reading skills
• Hours spent on reading

Inputs: student rosters, student profiles, teacher content

User activities: administration of reading assessments, administration of intervention activities, reading and listening to texts with scaffolding and accommodations.

Generated Data: reading assessment data, student created content, product usage stats, analytics

Proximal outcomes: improved foundational reading skills; improved fluency/reading comprehension; and higher engagement in intervention activities.

Distal outcomes: improved language proficiency, increased achievement in content areas; higher graduation rates and better college/career readiness.

Reading (along with Listening) is considered to be a stepping-stone for learning a language and developing productive Writing and Speaking skills (Bozorgian, 2012). Recognizing that reading is critically important to learning English, we are focusing on developing reading skills.

Research shows that improving foundational reading skills contributes to overall reading proficiency. For example, both breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge are critical for understanding (McKeown, 2014); learning about the morphological structure of words contributes to students’ comprehension of any new words they encounter (Kieffer, 2007); the efficiency of word recognition “conserves” processing resources that can be used for reasoning about text (Perfetti, 1993), etc. Weaker lower-level skills reduce cognitive ability that can be used for higher-level comprehension (Walczyk, 2001).

Capti Assess uses research-based assessments validated in numerous user research studies. ReadBasix assessment is reliable, with most Cronbach’s alpha values over .80 across subtests and forms used for different grade levels; 2) the subtests show high internal consistency, each providing unique added value relative; 3) assessment items do not have bias against certain subgroups of students (no DIF on gender or race); 4) assessment subtests demonstrate satisfactory external validity; and 5) the subtests are sensitive to gains in reading intervention (Sabatini, 2019). ReadBasix is sensitive to detect students’ natural growth in reading comprehension: students with normal decoding skills improve their reading comprehension by 1/5 of a Standard Deviation per year (Wang, 2018). GISA assessment was validated with elementary (Sabatini, 2016), middle (Sabatini, 2014), and high school students (O’Reilly, 2014), demonstrating reliability with Cronbach’s alpha >.80 across GISA forms. The studies showed that GISA produced a score range with no apparent floor or ceiling effects. GISA correlated (ranging between 0.52 and 0.68) with English Language Arts CA and PA state test scores (O’Reilly, 2014), and it is a valid predictor for academic vocabulary, complex reasoning, and perspective taking (LaRusso, 2016).

Capti Advance uses time-tested exercises that have been shown to improve reading skills (Burstein, 2017). The Cloze Procedure (exercises masking letters/words) has been shown to improve comprehension (Kennedy, 1971). Personalized exercises will save time and frustration, and make learning more effective by focusing the intervention on the most critical skills (Chen, 2006). Capti Advance will reinforce learning by exposing students to similar problems several times with spaced intervals (Baturay, 2009).

Capti Accommodate combines well-researched time-tested methods of accommodating students with disabilities and helping them read and comprehend texts, such as text to speech (Wood, 2017), special fonts and colors for dyslexia (Pijpker, 2013), font sizes for dyslexia (Rello, 2017), font and line width (Rubin, 2006), word and letter spacing (Slattery, 2016), etc.

Research demonstrates that students are more focused, motivated, and engaged when they are learning materials aligned with their interests (Pintrich, 1990; Zimmerman, 2001). Capti Accommodate allows teachers to engage students with any texts. Capti Advance allows teachers to automatically compose curriculum-aligned exercises for any texts chosen by the student, based on student interest, or by the teacher, to align with and reinforce the curriculum.

The core technology is software that is installable or delivered as a service. The software includes innovative usable user interfaces, learning and assessment content, and various algorithms including machine learning (AI), natural language processing, data extraction and analysis, etc.

Here is a collection of peer-reviewed research papers in prestigious journals.

Product demos:

Capti Assess: https://youtu.be/FIT4Mhm6ZH0 and https://youtu.be/ZCelmuPcTXk 

Capti Accommodate: https://youtu.be/xNVfNuFQt0A 

Capti Advance: no formal demo, early version is briefly reviewed in the pitch video at 1:17 https://youtu.be/ET_68A3MBM0 

User testimonials:

https://youtu.be/krnempL8C3M

https://youtu.be/xcgPWfmiQwk 

https://youtu.be/6K0szC6bSkk 

The company was founded by immigrants from Ukraine and India. Our founders included people with disabilities. We have increased our diversity on our advisory team, in senior positions such as our VP of Sales, in board advisors, in the director of sales position, and in our interim CFO position.  We also strive to hire diverse front line employees and are achieving success in these efforts. We are committed to increasing the diversity and inclusion in our team as we grow.

Our users are teachers and students; our buyers are principals and admins, e.g., Directors and Superintendents who need to address learning loss, accommodate struggling readers, and improve reading levels. We do direct B2B sales with annual licenses, but also experiment with distributors, referrers, and ecosystem partners. We signed SchoolHealth — a U.S. B2B distributor with 20+ sales reps. We are working with our partner, ETS on opportunities to bring Capti to specific states and countries, and exploring other partnerships.

There is existing competition in the accommodations, assessments, and interventions segments, which is an indication of a significant customer need. Our 100+ discovery interviews with educators revealed that a “perfect literacy solution” has to assess, accommodate, and advance reading in a personalized and integrated way. Such a solution did not exist, which is exactly how we built Capti. Other positive indicators that our product is needed include our customers buying, using, and renewing our product, and asking for more functionality.

 We use MailChimp to communicate with 50k+ buyers by sending them content marketing pieces, webinar invitations, new product capability announcements, etc. Prospective customers find us in web search or through referring websites. We have several referrers including ETS, SERP Institute, and Bookshare. Customers also find us through our ecosystem partnerships in Apple, Google, Schoology, and Canvas App Stores. We have been experimenting with LinkedIn, now Google and Bing, and soon YouTube ads. We believe there may also be a huge potential in the B2C consumer market, which we would like to explore this year.

The best path to financial sustainability is sales. To date, we have sustained and grew our company using a combination of grants, investments, contacts, and sales. As we grow our sales, we expect to be less dependent on the other sources of funding.

We found that U.S. school districts spend $20 to $500 per student on reading interventions, depending on a specific product and the number of licenses. We will charge $5/student for sitewide and $20/student for small group use. Capti Advance will run on the devices districts already have. It will cost $3,000 for a school of 500 students. Same for Capti Assess and Accommodate. The bundle will cost $6,000. International pricing will be adjusted to the specific markets to make the solution more affordable.

We will grow our inside sales team, but we are also actively exploring channel partnerships. For example, ETS is helping us explore opportunities of state and country-level sales, which creates amazing opportunities for growth. ETS has committed to co-invest in the next investment round to help scale growth.

To date, we raised $1.5M from small angels and institutional investors, including LearnLaunch and ETS to develop the solution. In 2021, we won two federal SBIR grants IES Phase I ($200k) and NSF Phase II ($1M) grants which sustained the company and enabled us to continue doing innovative R&D. We are expecting more SBIR grant funding in 2022-23, which will help further accelerate Capti R&D.

 Unfortunately, SBIR funding is restricted to be spent only on R&D and only in the U.S. We need unrestricted funding to invest in sales and marketing and outsourced R&D. We have been able to sustain such activities through product sales and service contracts, e.g., $50k with SERP Institute, $50k with University of Memphis, undisclosed amount with ETS, etc. We have generated over $155k in ARR sales in 2022 and over $600k in lifetime sales.

Our Capti Accommodate product has been sold to 50+ schools and colleges and is widely used by consumers. Capti Assess is already used by 10+ school districts, as well as reading researchers at Georgia State University, University of Memphis, Stanford, NYU, SERP Institute, WestEd, etc. Among recent successes, EARDF Reading Reimagined program has chosen Capti Assess to be the mandatory assessment that will measure the effectiveness of research interventions funded by EARDF. Capti Advance product is being piloted and is being prepared for launch in 2022-23SY.