Michael Vilardo, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, understands the value of education.
And while at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, working on his MBA, the pandemic hit, shifting his classes from in-person to Zoom.
“This opened my eyes to the limitations and opportunities within digital education,” he said.
In terms of limitations, he said he wanted UCLA do more to make digital learning rigorous and engaging.
“If top universities were struggling with the transition, imagine the challenges at the secondary level," he said. "I was energized to work towards improving the edtech space and drive outcomes for students.”
Improvements, to him, included leveraging top instructors from around the country to teach digital classes.
So, in the summer of 2020, Vilardo joined forces with co-founder Felix Ruano to start working on what would become Subject, a digital on-demand learning platform.
The company just opened a studio in Beverly Hills. The goal is to be the “Netflix" of high school education in terms of highly-compelling content.
Subject partners with school districts to supplement curriculum with accredited video courses. The majority of classes are considered traditional, like biology, with a few non-traditional ones sprinkled in as well, like financial literacy and cryptocurrency 101.
Subject courses are now available in more than 100 schools across the country.
Foundation
Subject is the fifth company Vilardo has created. One of them, NomΛd, was acquired by WISH STR Enterprises for an amount he declined to disclose.
NomΛd was a proptech startup that identified distressed and vacant housing opportunities and transformed them into nightly, weekly, or monthly budget rental options.
The most critical lesson he learned from all of his previous experience is that "the co-founder relationship/choice is the most paramount to both short-term and long-term success," he said.
"I am incredibly grateful to have been paired up with Felix Ruano," he added. "Our personality and professional differentiation provide for incredible impact, trust and diverse approaches to building this business."
Subject’s target market is high school students. But advanced middle schoolers can take its courses as well.
Funding
To date, the company has raised more than $34 million. Their main investors over their seed and Series A rounds have been Kleiner Perkins, Owl Ventures and Softbank.
Other investors include the founders of Cameo, WHOOP and Tecton.
Vilardo said a key person to have on Subject’s board is Tory Patterson, founder and managing partner of Owl Ventures, as it’s a leading investment firm in the edtech space.
Perks of Being in L.A.
In Subject's new studio, L.A. production and film talent join with "some of the nation’s most talented instructors," who fly to L.A. to film the courses, Vilardo explained.
A two-semester course can be filmed in as little as one to two weeks. The filming is the culmination of months of curriculum writing, script editing and quality checks.
"While Los Angeles has long been home to the most creative and production talent in the entire world, the tech scene here is seeing steady growth," Vilardo told L.A. Inno. "Many well-known startups have planted their roots here, making L.A. a leader in social media and the gaming industry, among others. In order for our product to simulate the best movie and television shows, we had to build Subject in Los Angeles."
Additionally, with Ruano being an L.A. native and Vilardo being a graduate of UCLA's business school, they both could draw upon their largely L.A.-based network.
