From AI Hype to Measurable Outcomes: How Smartschool’s Founders Won Over US School Districts
Schools are under incredible pressure these days. Around the world, educators have been called on to improve their pupils’ outcomes, but the new technologies they have come to depend on have not exactly lived up to the hype. Artificial intelligence, AI, had at first this kind of golden aura around it, that it was the answer to their problems, that it could help them hit their marks.
Instead, for some educators, AI is already looking like a dud, and they have grown skeptical. Which makes the success of Smartschool all the more surprising. Founded by three European entrepreneurs in Palo Alto, California, in 2023, Smartschool offers an agentic AI platform that helps schools and districts deliver high-impact tutoring to every student, in class and at home, including focused preparation for college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT.
“We are building a future where every student is supported by a tutor giving them instant feedback on their work,” says CEO Matt Maslowski. “We want every kid to have access to top-tier education,” he adds.
Three Friends
Maslowski cofounded Smartschool with two friends, Paul Burzynski and Kajetan Lewandowski. All three were born and educated in Poland, and all three found their way into the computer science field around the same time, developing the skills to craft competitive platforms while gradually gravitating toward education technology. While education remained a constant interest, Maslowski built his professional career in technology, working at Amazon Web Services and advising organizations on AI adoption before returning to education entrepreneurship. Earlier, he also worked as a tutor and educational consultant, giving him first-hand insight into the challenges students and teachers face.
In 2017, he cofounded Meet-IT, a European tutoring agency that helped students prepare for exams and competitions. “We worked with over a 10’000 students from Poland to the UK to Southeast Asia,” he says of the firm.
Another cofounder of Meet-IT was current Smartschool Chief Product Officer Paul Burzyński. Alongside his work in technology and entrepreneurship, he served as an educational consultant at Ivy Poland Foundation, helping gifted students from Central and Eastern Europe gain admission to leading universities, including Harvard and Yale. Those experiences shaped his understanding of how access to high-quality educational support can change students’ lives. Meet-IT was also where Lewandowski began to collaborate with what would become the Smartschool team, serving initially as a full-stack engineer and moving up to vice president of engineering. In between his time at Meet-IT and Smartschool, Lewandowski also worked on an app for Sky Health that delivered text-based intervention for patients with chronic procrastination. All of these experiences informed their vision for the new company and gave them a real-world perspective.
“We wanted to build a company around educational outcomes, not technology trends,” recalls Burzynski.
A Difficult Market
From the beginning, Smartschool’s founders knew that education technology would be one of the most challenging sectors to build in. Unlike many software companies that serve a single customer group, educational products must create value simultaneously for students, teachers, and school administrators, each with different priorities and incentives.
Schools also operate under strict privacy, compliance, and procurement requirements. District purchasing cycles often take months, and new products must demonstrate measurable academic impact before they are widely adopted.
“Our goal was never to build AI for the sake of AI,” says Maslowski. “We wanted to solve a real problem and help more students succeed. Education is one of the most sustainable ways to create long-term impact.”
Smartschool’s approach was to shift the narrative around AI from replacing teachers to scaling their impact. To accomplish this, the platform offers an AI assistant for every student, providing real-time support both in and out of the classroom. “This relieves teachers of the burden of constantly re-explaining basic concepts,” says Maslowski. “It saves time and energy too,” he adds.
Smartschool also worked to streamline workflows by offering features like automated test creation, standards-aligned question libraries, and instant feedback capabilities. “This reduced hours of weekly prep and grading to just a few clicks,” notes Maslowski.
Final ingredients were abiding by strict data compliance, meeting statewide and district-level privacy standards, and connecting on a personal level with schools and education authorities.
Product development under Burzyński’s leadership relies heavily on direct classroom feedback. He also led the design of the teacher workflows, curriculum alignment systems, and classroom integrations that enabled large-scale district adoption.
“We spend time in classrooms, work closely with teachers and administrators, analyze what works and what doesn’t, and continuously improve the product based on that feedback,” says Burzyński. “The best educational technology is built with educators, not for educators.”
Measurable Results
That business-to-school approach has enabled Smartschool to serve 200,000 students and counting across more than 30 school districts, including New York City and Boston-area schools. It’s also led to measurable results.
One early adopter has been the Science School for Exploration and Discovery in the Bronx in New York City. After implementing the Smartschool platform, math test scores rose by 102 percent, while in some specific algebra and geometry classes, students saw respective 79 percent and 145 percent improvements in scores.
“Our combination of artificial intelligence and learning psychology allows us to provide students with a personalized educational experience,” says Lewandowski, the company’s CTO, who has led development of the platform. Findings from the Learning Experience Design Research Institute found that 90 percent of students using the platform met or exceeded grade-level standards.
The company’s growth reflects the complementary strengths of its founders. As CEO, Masłowski has led fundraising, strategic partnerships, and expansion into school districts across the United States. Burzyński has shaped product direction, ensuring the platform aligns with classroom realities and educator needs. Meanwhile, CTO Kajetan Lewandowski has built the technology infrastructure behind Smartschool’s AI systems, enabling the platform to operate reliably at district scale.
Investors are also impressed. In April, Smartschool raised $3 million from Inovo.vc, 16z Scout Fund, The Explorer Fund, and prominent angel investors including ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski, Snowflake co-founder Marcin Żukowski, and Booksy co-founder Konrad Howard.
Maslowski says that Smartschool plans to use the proceeds to scale the company’s platform, expand its sales reach, and adapt the product to different educational levels, from primary through high school.
“Our vision is to help school districts navigate AI adoption, making high-quality education more accessible, and ensuring students develop the skills needed for an AI-driven future,” says Maslowski. “We are not out to replace teachers with AI,” he adds. “We want to give teachers the ability to support dozens of students with the level of attention that previously was only possible through one-on-one tutoring.”
