Q&A: From Wall Street Dreams to AI Classrooms – Simon Yang’s Mission with Prepp
Simon Yang walked away from a predictable finance career to build Prepp, an AI-powered platform for K-12 classrooms in emerging markets. In this conversation, he explains why he took the leap, how Prepp works, and how a blend of execution and imagination is shaping both the product and the company’s growth.
Q: You had a clear path to Wall Street. Why choose education instead?
A: I kept coming back to impact. During my time at the University of Chicago, I tutored and worked on cross-border education projects, and I also helped education departments in emerging markets deploy digital tools. Standing in a rural classroom with one teacher and 60 students, I felt the urgency. Education is often seen as slow or unglamorous, but that’s precisely why it needs focused innovation. With a background in data science and experience across U.S. and Asian school systems, I saw a chance to build something that could level the playing field. I chose to found Prepp—and betting on impact over income has been the most rewarding decision I’ve made.
Q: What is Prepp building when you say “AI-powered infrastructure for classrooms”?
A: Think of Prepp as an operating system for K-12 teaching and learning. Today, our platform generates standards-aligned lesson plans and materials, tracks real-time engagement, and delivers adaptive practice tailored to each student’s skill gaps. Every learner gets a personal AI tutor, and every teacher gets a co-pilot for planning, instruction, and grading. A teacher logs in and sees a data-driven plan for the day plus targeted support for students who struggled yesterday—practical help when it’s needed most.
We’re also advancing embodied AI and intelligent agents. Embodied AI brings a presence into the classroom—animated avatars or compact robots that demonstrate concepts, lead exercises, and make lessons more interactive. Intelligent agents tackle specific tasks: a conversational tutor to reinforce lessons, an assessment agent that grades and gives feedback, or background assistants that answer student questions after hours and flag class-wide misconceptions. None of this replaces educators; it extends their reach.
Under the hood, we’re building cloud-and-edge infrastructure that works in low-bandwidth environments and aligns to local curricula. Teachers get a dashboard with actionable recommendations; students access an AI mentor in their language on a tablet or shared device. Picture a rural classroom where an AI co-teacher helps the human teacher personalize instruction for every child. Early pilots show higher engagement and meaningful time savings for teachers—signals that the tech is catching up to the vision.
Q: EdTech is tough to scale, especially with public schools. How does your B2G2C model work?
A: We partner with governments—ministries or departments of education—and roll out through public school systems. That top-down deployment instantly reaches teachers and students at scale. Yes, the sales cycles are longer and include pilots, procurement, and training, but the payoff is significant: one agreement can serve hundreds of thousands of learners.
We make it work by aligning to each country’s standards, co-designing with local educators, and proving value with data—higher engagement, better coverage, less prep time. We often keep the platform free at the point of use for schools and students, while governments fund implementation, training, and custom content or analytics. Creative partnerships—like bundling with connectivity providers or collaborating with development initiatives—help address infrastructure hurdles. Once teachers and students embrace Prepp, their feedback supports renewals and expansion, creating a flywheel of trust and impact.
Q: You talk about blending “Asian execution” with Silicon Valley creativity. What does that look like day to day?
A: From my Chinese upbringing, I learned disciplined, results-first execution—the bias to ship, iterate fast, and solve constraints with urgency. We set ambitious goals and move with speed. At the same time, the Silicon Valley mindset encourages us to challenge assumptions and explore bold ideas. I try to create space for both: rigorous timelines and agile sprints, plus open brainstorming and hackathons where unconventional solutions are welcome.
For example, when we built our first lesson-generation system, we pushed hard on delivery while empowering the team to experiment with novel approaches to large language models rather than just copying what existed. In practice, you’ll see a highly organized stand-up in the morning and a free-form whiteboard jam in the afternoon. The result is building quickly—without building blindly.
Q: How did you pitch global education equity to top-tier investors in a way that felt like a venture-scale opportunity?
A: We framed equity as both moral imperative and market opportunity. The story is simple: a student in a rural classroom should have access to the same quality of instruction as one in a well-resourced district—and AI makes that possible. We positioned Prepp not as a charity, but as the platform that can transform learning for the next billion students while building a durable business.
We showed how education spend is massive, digital adoption is accelerating, and AI unlocks personalization at scale. Treating Prepp as infrastructure—an operating system for emerging-market education—helped convey defensibility: if a country standardizes on your platform, you create a moat and long-term contracts. Our B2G2C model isn’t a drawback; it’s a distribution engine that can onboard millions efficiently.
Finally, we grounded the vision with pilots: measurable engagement gains and hours saved for teachers. The combination of scale, stickiness, and real-world traction resonated. Investors saw that if this works, it’s not just a product—it’s an institution shaping how classrooms operate. That’s the kind of ambition and evidence that gets Silicon Valley excited about a space many once considered “too hard.”
