The Story of a Startup: How I Fell in Love With the Problem and Fell Into Starting an Institute

Behind every startup is a story. And behind every startup, there’s a founder. In the case of MathTrack Institute, that’s me. Specifically, I’m a co-founder along with our President, Andrew Salmon, COO Marian Bibb , and CRO Nickolas A. Williams, CFRE. Needless to say, I can’t tell the MathTrack Institute story without weaving in my own personal narrative. That’s where I want to start in today’s newsletter because this is all personal to me — it’s informed by my experiences along this journey, both the highs and the lows. It’s informed by my long-held desire to be useful (more on that later). My constant curiosity drives me to discover more, uncover the why, and understand more deeply. And, of course, it’s not just my story. It’s the story of the students I’ve encountered along the way, the hard-working teammates who have joined MathTrack and without whom we could never have created a first-of-its-kind institute of higher education for apprenticeship-based math teaching credentialing and degrees.

A Math Teacher, a Truck, a Dog and a Tennis Ball

Let’s take a step back and start at the beginning of my teaching career in North Carolina, where I moved without knowing a single soul in the state. It sounds like a country song lyric, but it was true: I drove into the state with little more than a truck, a dog, and an old guitar. I made $27,600 my first year of teaching, had student debt, and thought $1600 a month in take-home pay was enough to be useful (it was not).

I made $27,600 my first year of teaching, had student debt, and thought $1600 a month in take-home pay was enough to be useful (it was not).

Not only was I teaching students just a few years younger than me, I didn't even have a curriculum for half of my classes. Another realization? I hadn’t studied the mathematics I was teaching beyond my experiences in Middle and High School. The lowest-level mathematics course I studied at Purdue University was Calculus 3. Even worse, half of the school’s mathematics department had quit by Winter break. Not to mention, only a few were licensed mathematics teachers to begin with.

The students were brilliant, thoughtful, and inspiring. They were also violent and angry, and I had bruises on both my heart and body to prove it. I got a black eye on my first day after tossing a tennis ball around the classroom to "produce an atmosphere of active learning." One student, whose name I remember but won’t share and who later went to prison for murder, sent the ball back to me at a speed even a major league scout would respect. My right eye was the catcher’s mitt. I was demoralized and hurt, and I couldn’t figure out why the students didn’t see me as a catalyst for what they needed. I wanted to understand poverty, but realized I had no idea what that word meant. I was wrong about much, including my understanding of the cultures and communities in which I was now living.

Growing up between a cornfield and a basketball goal in Indiana had made me curious, but little else that was useful here. Inequity, racism? There was generational trauma in my classroom that I was ill-equipped to understand, empathize with, or navigate. But I was curious and had enough humility to understand how little I knew and how much I could learn.

The Success of the Future Has Its Roots in Survival

From North Carolina, I went to Chicago's Southside, which taught me about gang violence, what it was like to bury children, and what real suffering looked like. I gave up on coaching when one of my starting guards was murdered in his home over an Xbox game. Instead, I poured my belief in the power of teams into what I suspected had real power for change: peer teaching and learning. When all the teachers quit again at my new school, I managed to train students to teach each other because, as I told them, no one else was coming. This would become a pillar of MathTrack’s future work; it felt like survival at the time.

The students were brilliant and capable but wholly isolated from access to high-quality curriculum, teachers, and programming. I became obsessed with deeply understanding all the mathematics I was teaching, connecting, giving purpose, and effectively answering questions plaguing my classroom's effectiveness. I wanted to understand the complexity of the classroom, why it felt like an impossible job, and how new technology could help simplify that complexity. Students kept asking questions without easy answers, further fueling my obsession. Why do we need to learn this? Why can't you divide by zero? What's the point of a decimal if I already know fractions? Algebra is stupid; when will I ever use it?

I became obsessed with deeply understanding all the mathematics I was teaching, connecting, giving purpose, and effectively answering questions plaguing my classroom's effectiveness.

Balancing Practice and Theory

Honestly, their questions were mirrors of some of my own. I was an unorthodox blend of my parents, a 40-year educator, and a public accountant turned manufacturer CFO. From a very young age, I felt that usefulness came from curiosity and the ability to acquire and apply skills to reduce the human struggle (starting with my own). I've always believed there is no greater usefulness than reducing the unnecessary pain in human existence.

That mindset explains why I remember being very frustrated by the coursework in my undergrad experience, which was filled with theoretical perspectives on the broad domain of mathematical study and seemingly devoid of application-based skills. I was curious, but I wanted to be useful. What I was learning or memorizing were solutions to problems already solved. I could read those in our textbooks and did so rather quickly and efficiently. Why was I going to lectures where the chapters were monotonously read, often by non-English as first language professors? Have you ever listened to a native Russian talk about matrices in English? I have, I love mathematics, and I still don’t recommend it.

I would later realize that my program of study for my Bachelor's was no different than the first mathematics degrees conferred in the US, dating back to the early 1800s. Surely, it was time for change. Weren’t there ways of studying teaching through a highly mathematical lens? Wasn’t teaching an applied skill to be respected and acknowledged? I chose to teach in part out of respect for its pragmatic usefulness. The two types of people pivotal to my growth beyond my parents were the teachers and coaches I was lucky to be exposed to outside my home. I saw a pathway to usefulness.

I would later realize that my program of study for my Bachelor's was no different than the first mathematics degrees conferred in the US, dating back to the early 1800s. Surely, it was time for change.

Finding myself in Texas was a turning point in my adult life. I secured a scholarship at the University of Texas and started studying and working towards a Master's Degree in Mathematics. My program of study continued to leave my thirst for usefulness wholly unquenched, with more theory and more courses that seemed to have little answer to my questions. However, I developed my technical and data science skills and developed my belief that applying technology could change how we educate. YouTube was becoming more well-understood, and I figured out that I could learn almost anything I wanted by searching and watching videos, trying things, checking out things from the UT library, and then looking at the references and finding more that I didn't know.

Back Home Again in Indiana

My Ph.D. studies were back home in Indiana on Purdue's campus, with a much different set of skills than my first journey. I had followed a typical Midwestern pattern — moving home and starting a family — and I saw Higher Education as a place where I could make an impact. If there were a game to be played, I would have all the tools at my disposal, including the degrees, titles, and perception of credibility needed. I furthered my understanding of complexity, pouring myself into learning dynamic systems, complex systems, and complexity science. I used these learnings to describe a new way of teaching people to be effective mathematics teachers. My curiosity was out of control; I felt like I was getting somewhere.

My first faculty position gave me the opportunity of a lifetime: building a peer tutoring facility that ultimately impacted more than 42 undergraduate courses and employed hundreds of undergraduate students to build engaging learning environments with their peers. Some of the undergraduates I was lucky enough to meet at that time still work for us today at MathTrack. Among them is one of my co-founders, Marian Bibb, who is more than ten years into our collaboration. Marian has progressed with her own story, from the talented undergrad I first met to meeting her husband and becoming a mother, wife, and startup Founder. Her brilliance was evident when I first met her, and her growth into the leader she is today has been truly epic.

As soon as the peer-reviewed articles I had co-authored were published, proving that peer learning was more effective than just lectures in mathematics, the work wasn't embraced — it was attacked.

After years of study and struggle, I was beyond excited to achieve my goal of “usefulness.” However, my successes were not met with celebration. As soon as the peer-reviewed articles I had co-authored were published, proving that peer learning was more effective than just lectures in mathematics, the work wasn't embraced — it was attacked. These attacks became personal, showing that my work threatened the tradition and the livelihoods based on it—a disruption to over a century’s worth of conventional wisdom. Lucky for me and those who believed in what we were doing, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation allowed us to research and develop those models into the K-12 system. The partnership with the State of Indiana was also forged, as we received support and funding from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation as well. And thus, my academic career ended, and my entrepreneurial journey began. It was an exit from one type of usefulness pursuit and the start of another.

Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

After years of working within the traditional higher education system, my faith in the old approach was shattered. But my belief in the students' power was stronger than ever. As a potential “workforce,” students were in every school and didn't require higher education or state policy to influence. If we could build learning centers called Learning Commons in every school, students could be empowered to learn from teaching, teach each other, and potentially even be paid for their work at school.

It was a novel, pragmatic approach to training people to teach math by studying the math they would teach as teachers. And it worked. Soon, we had scaled the solution to several schools throughout central Indiana and the state. It was exciting, it was hard, it was a moment. COVID crashed to our shores right then, and funding was cut when schools shut for one of the first times in history. As with any startup, when your back is against the wall, you are the most creative and the most curious. If you are not, your business won't survive.

We had a few things going for our team at the time. If we could train third graders to teach effectively, we could train adults. The education system was at its highest level of crisis, and that meant that schools were open to changing everything because everything had changed. This environment bred uncertainty, but it also created opportunity.

One day, I got a call from a school network leader to tell me his entire middle school mathematics teaching staff had quit. The call was based on the idea that math people hang out together or that because I was a mathematics professor, I kept math teachers in a pasture ready for the rodeo. Of course, neither of those is true, but I was glad he called. Curious, I asked a fateful question: "How about you let our team find, hire, train, and run your math department?" To the credit of the school network leader, I believe he said something like, "Shit, it can't get any worse." Thus, Departments as a Service was born. Soon after, the Indiana Department of Education funded our team with a significant grant that allowed us to scale our innovation throughout the State. They believed in our capabilities, and we were quickly proving that this faith was well-placed.

We failed quickly but learned how to find, train, and retain talent based on the premise that we could do better at hiring and retaining teachers than schools. This is the time when long-term friends joined full-time and professionalized our approach and business. We scaled quickly, hired dozens of teachers, and deployed them throughout the State. How did so many schools say yes to outsourcing their math departments to us? What a crazy idea! We believed that if we centralized the department and gave teachers equity ownership in our company and a different working life, we could deploy a higher quality service for all students regardless of zip codes. We were right about some things and very wrong about others. We were a startup, but the talent on our team was incredible. We were collectively humbled by our opportunity to solve one of the most complex issues in education.

Forging (Another) New Path

By this stage of my entrepreneurial journey, I had a mentality of “design with” or “design out.” By “design with,” I mean partnering with existing entities to utilize structures and processes already in play. In contrast, “design out” denotes a custom-build process where we create something new and stand it up, using only internal resources within our company. With help from my growing team, I also developed a sophisticated understanding of the complexity of teaching and building a company. My theoretical mathematics training became useful; I could understand and quickly assimilate many theories ranging from cognitive science, neuroscience, startups, education, adult learning, and mathematics education. I learned more than my entire Ph.D. studies weekly, as running a startup is genuinely drinking knowledge from a firehose. There were hours of conversations with my co-founders, where we shared ideas and thoughts and further fell in love with the problem we were trying to solve.

We also realized that now that we were employing teachers, we needed to go back to universities and see if we could find a way to license them more effectively and professionally while keeping the total expense as low as possible. We also started to learn that a department as a service was a good business but not scalable to the level of impact that we wanted (that I wanted). The problem was bigger than a single state, so the solution also had to scale and have a sustainable business model.

After many months of attempting to “design with” universities, we decided to “design out” instead as a team. We applied to be able to license teachers on our own without the need for an existing university partnership.

With no edits to our application submitted to the Indiana Department of Education, we received a unanimous vote from the Indiana State Board of Education to be able to license teachers as an approved Education Preparation Provider only months after deciding to do so. Now, we had a pathway to sunset the department as a service and focus on expanding our training to create highly effective, diverse, and technology-equipped educators who could work in any school and community. The bottlenecks to scale and impact were becoming more clear and less reliant on a services-focused business model. We saw a pathway to a technology-only model, one that had the types of margins and scale that meant we were now venture-backable. In fact, we raised $1.5M in pre-seed, seed and bridge round funding from angel and institutional investors.

Matching Talent to Teacher Training

The next step became abundantly clear: we had to help schools equip the talent they were finding with expert-level skillsets effectively and quickly through technology. But there was a problem. The available talent had a background we didn't originally anticipate. The largest available workforce with all the prerequisites to be an expert educator didn't have a bachelor's degree. It’s clear in the data: paraprofessionals are the fastest-growing talent base in K-12 Education nationwide. In contrast, the talent pipeline for traditionally trained mathematics teachers has decreased by nearly 40% over the last decade.

The largest available workforce with all the prerequisites to be an expert educator didn't have a bachelor's degree. It’s clear in the data: paraprofessionals are the fastest-growing talent base in K-12 Education nationwide.

Again, we went back to universities to find a way to partner to provide these professionals with a bachelor's finisher program, one where both their previous credits and daily professional work would count for college credit. Circumstances demanded a method that would place a premium on time with a price tag appropriate for the earning power of teachers. In short, an undergraduate degree should cost closer to $10K than $120K.

I had talks with 13 different university Deans, Presidents, and Faculty. There was much interest and understanding that this type of degree is desirable and likely highly scalable, as well as alleviating many of the concerns of adult distance learning. But there were two major sticking points: (1) the cost and (2) how to give college credit for viable work. I love to tell the story of what happened when I told one university president in Indiana that it should cost no more than $10K to earn a BS in Math. He literally spit out his coffee. It was a moment.

Guardrails, Not Roadblocks

At this point, if you are still reading, you know our team doesn't look at difficulties as obstructions but rather as guardrails. One of our core pillars for innovation as a learning organization is that constraints are necessary to spawn innovation and growth. Once you understand the walls you are working within, much can be done inside of those walls.

One of our primary guardrails was around the cost of an education degree. The goal was to make the cost of a degree 30% of the starting salary of the industry. This was a moonshot goal, one that required a significant amount of research and development.

For teaching, that meant that an undergraduate degree should cost around $10-15K so that the return on investment matched the earning potential of a teaching career. Given this goal, it became clear that we would have to find a way to give credit for previous work in the industry and current viable work. Further, that credit would have to be defensible through the rigor of accreditation. What we needed was a rubric. What we needed was apprenticeships. Apprenticeships? Isn’t that for skilled trades, advanced manufacturing, and other industries? Yes, traditionally, apprenticeships have been around in the trades since recorded history began. Teaching is perfect for this model; you learn more in a day of teaching math than in a year of sitting through lectures passively studying theory about how people learn and how to teach. You also learn quickly if you are cut out to be an educator or not. It's not for the faint of heart, as I’ve shared.

The Value of an Apprenticeship-Based Model

Within a short window, we became an approved registered apprenticeship provider with an official designation through Indiana's Department of Labor and Department of Workforce Development. Now, we had a nationally recognized rubric for viable work tied to competencies and the rigor of saying that college credit will only be conferred when someone is working viably in the industry in which they are studying. We didn’t want to be entrenched in a rigor debate about our training, so we ask our students to apply what they have learned through viable work. No traditional undergraduate program asks you to apply the mathematics you are studying in a career before giving you credit. Think about that—what would it have been like for you only to have gotten credit for Finite Mathematics at Indiana University if you applied it in work first? As perhaps is obvious, traditional approaches to higher education can’t do this. But we can, which gives us rigor far beyond reproach.

Becoming an Institute of Higher Education

The final stage of evolution came when we realized that all of this research and development wouldn't result in a full degree with the partners we were designing with. No matter how much intellectual work we put into it, there still wasn't a clear pathway through partnership.

Universities had too many legacy business models and faculty governance; they felt shackled by those constraints rather than enabled by them. So, in February of 2023, we decided to become an institution of higher education. By May, we were designated by the Commission of Higher Education in Indiana as an Institution of Higher Education; by October, we had an approved program of study and degree. In December, we enrolled our first cohort of professional apprenticeship-based degree-seeking students. We got there and built something that was needed and useful. Our students will earn an applied mathematics degree through apprenticeship, where they study mathematics in a rigorous and research-backed way designed for their professional careers as teachers.

This means that the coursework is focused on unpacking the content these students will already be tasked to teach. It answers the questions of why, how, and what students ask daily — the same ones that plagued me for a decade. Now, we needed to derisk the process of becoming regionally accredited so our educator graduates could qualify for a teaching license and access their grants and other funding scholarships, which typically takes four years.

Expanding the Solution: The Next Chapter for MathTrack Institute

Where do we go from here? Thus far, we have gotten a pretty useful model to market. We had also built a team that was capable of almost anything. But that isn’t good enough. Reducing unneeded hardship or burden from society has a much bigger scale. We are at an inflection point when the trend nationally for the amount of mathematics teachers produced compared to the community demand stops its death spiral.

We don’t want just to close the gap; we want to end the shortage. Yes, end it. Since we’re mathematicians by training, we’ve done the math. Our calculations show we must train and develop 50,000 mathematics teachers by 2030. That’s not just a goal; it's an initiative, and it is imperative for our communities and our country to have these types of initiatives. Grandiose? Ask the first-year teacher I once was if he would like to start his own institution of higher education one day. He would have laughed at you, me, and anyone else who would have that idea. At least at that time, he knew what he was capable of was little more than being curious and a desire to be useful. So, what are we capable of doing now? Follow us to find out.