EverLearn Campus

10,000 baby boomers will retire every day for the next 15 years in the U.S. (creating 55 million new retirees), yet their needs for social-cognitive engagement and continual personal growth are highly neglected. Few lifelong learning solutions are designed specifically for them (unlike Asia, which pioneered 100K schools for seniors when they realized lifelong learning addresses those issues well). Traditional Adult Ed and online classes here are not senior-friendly and don't serve their unique needs for stimulation and personal growth. Loneliness and cognitive disengagement, as a result, reduce lifespan by 14 years, same as smoking, and affect underprivileged communities and minority races twice as much, creating great health and educational inequity.

A hybrid marketplace for live, interactive senior education with anti-ageism and community-centered design. Book classes both online and offline. Meet new friends through classes and chat directly on our website. Inspired by Asia’s booming senior education market that addresses those needs well and founded by a team of startup veterans, learning design experts, and tech professionals from Harvard and MIT deeply committed to solving an unmet need and creating the future of Inspired Aging.

Our solutions serve seniors age 50+ in the U.S., especially those who lack traditional means to intellectually, cognitively, and socially stimulating activities. Their physical health may be well-served, but their cognitive and social health are not. Lifelong learning is proven to be an effective solution. Socialized Lifelong Learning, as coined by EverLearn Campus, is where we combine the benefits of an active social life with active learning. Our plan to partner with the Veteran's Administration, the AARP, Medicare Carriers, and Government Agencies will also allow us to provide the product for free for the end users. 

Ying (CEO): 4 years of experience teaching real senior classes online; Startup Veteran: 5 years of leadership roles such as growth director at now a VC-exited startup & COO at a Google-backed startup; Master's degree in Learning Technologies from Harvard Education School (subject expertise); Kathy (COO): 30+ years of executive sales and marketing roles, representative of our users (she is 60+ and a community leader), also has a Master's degree in Innovative Learning Design from Harvard Education School (subject expertise); Gloria (CTO): scary smart MIT technical leader who can develop and scale any software, expert in AI and algorithm, degree in Computational Neuroscience (designing our knowledge marketplace), and 3 years of experience facilitating senior support groups. In us, you will find Founder-Market fit as well as a united, well-rounded, passionate team who deeply, genuinely care about our senior community, are close to that community, and love working together as a team.

For our first pilot, we recruited via local Councils on Aging and church leaders; our audience loved our classes, 85% started paying & referred 2-3 friends on average. Organic growth 300%, now serving 150 paying customers. We are generating nearly 5-figure monthly revenue, won competitive grants from MIT and Harvard, placed top 20 at President's Innovation Challenge in social impact, and won Harvard Business School's Pitch Competition. We are in talks with angel investors about a pre-seed round. 

Solve's unique focus on social impact makes the program different from any other accelerator. EverLearn was founded based on our mission -- to innovatively transform the world's senior population from loneliness and disengagement to active and thriving, something that I (the founder), have seen my grandmother go through with her senior university in China. We want to bring life-changing benefits to seniors, especially those who are underserved and underprivileged, who are affected by those problems more often (about twice as likely). Solve's focus on reducing inequity through innovation is what we admire and why we applied. 

There are 3 types of education solutions for seniors. The first two are not designed for seniors. They are 1. Synchronous classes (community colleges, BU's Evergreen program, etc.) and 2. Asynchronous classes (Khan Academy, Coursera, YouTube, Udemy, etc.). Seniors often report frustration with condescending, dismissive, ageist attitude in live classrooms where no one listens to them or cares about their opinions, believing they have nothing to contribute. Seniors sometimes enjoy learning from YouTube but do not like the lack of interactivity or community "togetherness" that contributes to their loneliness and isolation (our findings after months of research as well as running our classes). The third type is learning platforms made for seniors, especially online ones similar to us, such as GetSetUp and SeniorPlanet. Many students of ours left these platforms to join ours because they only teach "fluffier" topics, lack any cognitive engagement, and are not truly socially interactive. Our classes are taught by young ivy league students (our older students surprisingly love this), offer relevant and fresh topics (such as AI and neuroscience), and focus a lot on community-building. And through continuous feedback, we developed our unique, senior-centered pedagogy and teacher training process. We will lead the wave of senior education in the U.S. and beyond by focusing on what seniors really want out of their education and creating human-centered learning design for them. It will change the entire senior education market. 

Inspired by the Asian senior education market and by my own grandmama's life-changing transformation, we realized that immersive, active, socialized lifelong learning can truly change seniors' quality of life. We believe that aging in the 21st century is about more than adding years to lifespan; it's about making every senior empowered to feel personal growth and purpose, a goal that our students echoed. These are real quotes from our students, "These are the best classes I've ever taken, period. I love bragging to my grandson that I'm learning AI -- from MIT!" (Steve, Veteran), and my personal favorite, "I feel good about myself when I come to class. I feel confident. I finally feel like I'm doing something important and meaningful again." (Elaine, retired middle school teacher) Quotes like this show that we are actually realizing our dream of bringing life-changing impact to seniors one innovatively designed, senior-centered class at a time.

Impact Measurement: We assess all our students to see whether we have helped them achieve an increase in their quality of life. We are quantitatively measuring if we have increased their cognitive capabilities, self-esteem, social activities, and self-perceived level of thriving and happiness. 

Goals and Metrics go beyond financial: We want to build a life-changing platform that doctors would recommend to their recently retired patients: "There are so many exciting things to do and learn on this platform, and it's very affordable/free!"

On our office wall, we wrote "3 years, 1 million students, CHANGE THE WORLD." I also wrote to myself, "10 years, 20 million students, CHANGE THE WORLD."

Our solution is built on a learning management software that also doubles as a knowledge marketplace and digital library. We also use SMS and email marketing technologies to engage our students, whichever their preferred way of communication is. We also use Zoom recordings for classes because our students have requested them. We also use chat plugin and a community directory to enable students to socialize outside of class. 

4 people: 3 cofounders (2 full-time Ying and Gloria, 1 part-time Kelly) and 1 founding team member (1 part-time Kathy). 

We have been working together for 10 months. We met through class and worked on a previous project on mental health together. 

Our entire team and advisor team are led by women of color, diverse in race (Asian, Black, White), age (20-64), and culture. We will continue this tradition by encouraging diversity, equity, and inclusion with monthly talks, all-company meetings, and dedicated side-projects that will promote these values.