Andrew Sutherland is the founder of Quizlet, a mobile and web-based study application that allows students to study information via learning tools and games.
Early life and education
Andrew Sutherland was born on December 2, 1995. At the age of 15, while Sutherland was still in the second year at Albany High School in California, he developed a web program to help him better prepare for a quiz. Sutherland scored 100% and kept building the product. Two years later, Sutherland launched the product to the public, enrolled in Massachusetts Institute of Technology and took a bachelor’s degree in computer science. At the time, Sutherland was both a student and founder of a fast-growing company.
While Sutherland was still at MIT, he took some computer science classes and learned a lot about speech recognition, all while growing Quizlet from his dorm room. Sutherland lived with an inspiring and creative group of friends at East Campus. After three incredible years, Sutherland left MIT to go all-in on Quizlet.
Quizlet
In October 2005, Sutherland created Quizlet, a mobile and web-based study application that allows students to study information via learning tools and games, and launched to the public in January 2007.
Sutherland conceptualized Quizlet while he was memorizing animal names for his French class. Sutherland began writing a program to help him study. These first lines of codes were deleted and then rewritten over the course of 420 days.
In 2009, Sutherland collaborated with researchers at MTI’s SLS group to enhance their speech recognizer. They extended a real-time web-based speech recognizer that allowed students on Quizlet answer questions by voice; any inconsistency was fed back into the recognizer model. In 2011, the company improved the ability to listen to content using text-to-speech. Until 2011, Quizlet imparted staff and financial resources with the Collectors Weekly web site.
Sutherland acquired the coveted “Node Jam” with Quizlet at the Node Summit in 2012, which concentrates on the best applications using Node j.s., a computing language. Along with the award, the company received $100,000 in prizes. In August 2012, Quizlet released an app for the iPad and iPhone and shortly afterward released an app for Android devices. Sutherland has also made it to the elite list of “Forbes 30 under 30” twice for 2012 and 2013.
On April 29, 2015, Quizlet authorized HTTPS on their site. On November 23, 2015, Quizlet secured $12 million in a Series A led by Union Square Ventures and Costanoa Venture Capital with the participation from Altos Ventures and Owl Ventures, to use its funding to hire, expand the product portfolio, fuel its growth, build out internationally, and continue delivering its mission to create the most impactful digital learning tools. In addition to this, Fred Wilson and Greg Sands also joined Quizlet’s board of directors.
On August 10, 2016, Quizlet launched a revamp to their website with a new design interface, along with a new homepage and logo. Their mobile apps for Android and iOS also experienced a design interface update. In 2016, Quizlet was acknowledged by SimilarWeb as the fastest developing US Education site in 2015. In the same year, Quizlet appointed a new CEO, Matt Glotzbach, former Vice President of Product Management at YouTube.
On August 23, 2017, the company presented a new diagramming feature to help learners with subjects heavy on visuals like geography, vocabulary, anatomy, and architecture.
On February 6, 2018, Quizlet proclaimed that it had gathered an additional $20 million in a Series B funding, led by Icon Ventures, with the participation of Altos Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Owl Ventures, and Union Square Ventures, to use in accelerating the company’s artificial intelligence capabilities, increase Quizlet’s international footprint and build out its data science team.
Quizlet chief executive officer Matthew Glotzbach has revealed some notable feats for the emerging educational technology, a few months after obtaining a $20 million financing: it’s reached 50 million active users monthly, up from 30 million a year ago, and though it’s not profitable yet, its revenue is increasing 100 percent YoY.
On October 31, 2018, Quizlet revealed the opening of their second office in Denver.
People
Quizlet has six current team members, including Sutherland as the founder and CTO, Matthew Glotzbach as the CEO, Thompson Paine as the General Manager, Tim Miller as the Vice President of Engineering, Shane Mooney as Mobile Engineer, and Roland Marat as Software Engineer.
Quizlet has also six board members and advisors, including Fred Wilson, Greg Sands, Mark Selcow, Tory Patterson, David Margulius, and Dave Fetterman.
Quizlet today
Quizlet is currently adopted by two-thirds of students from high school and half of the university students in the United States. It equips students via flashcards and various tests and games. As of February 6, 2019, Quizlet has more than 300 million user-generated flashcard sets and more than 50 million active users. Quizlet now lists amongst the top 50 websites in the United States.