When Suchi Deshpande's son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in 2014, she and her husband quickly learned that they had to take his education into their own hands.
They spent years taking their son to different specialists who tended to work only on his weaknesses, not his strengths, Deshpande said. Learning about his differences and finding him the right resources was a difficult and isolating process — one that led her to conceive the idea for a digital education platform that could help parents get personalized support.
"We essentially had to go through that journey by ourselves," Deshpande said. "Almost all parents go through the same thing when they see that there's a problem but they don't know how to handle it. It's almost a year or two of effort before they understand the problem, and it's another year to find the right resources."
Deshpande, who has a background in the technology industry, founded Learnfully Inc. in 2020 with CEO Letha McLaren. The startup employs 35 people and has raised about $2 million in funding, including a seed round raised in December that's being used to build out the company's technology.
While the company was founded in Redwood City and is still headquartered there, Deshpande and her family moved this summer to Denver, where she said the neurodivergent community is more organized and the resources are more plentiful.
"Denver is such an open community, and there's not a stigma with [neurodivergent] issues," Deshpande said. "There are so many resources and an understanding and acceptance. It's not there there isn't in other places, it's just that Denver is ahead."
Given its progressive approach and the availability of educational therapists, Denver has become a "key market focus" and is strategically important to the startup, Learnfully said. The company — a 2022 Bay Area Inno Startup to Watch — is seeking to expand in the Denver area with in-person learning centers. It's already established centers in Southern California and the Bay Area.
Parents who notice their kids struggling in the classroom can go to Learnfully for an assessment and to be paired with a specialized instructor. Instruction can either be done virtually in peoples' homes or in Learnfully centers. The company uses artificial intelligence to gauge kids' behavior during assessments and instruction and shares that information with parents.
Learnfully is trying to help parents and kids
The service offers multiple methods for teaching, from lessons on self-regulating emotions to a program that uses visual, auditory and tactile senses to connect sounds and words.
"We want to identify the learner's profile, and then pair them with an educational therapist and a program that we know works best for them," Deshpande said. "Where the technology comes in is that we can take a lot of qualitative and quantitative data to show parents how their kids are making progress."
Between 2009 and 2017, one in six children ages 3 to 17 were diagnosed with a developmental disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Often, kids can seem defiant or disruptive because they realize something is wrong with their learning but don't know how to fix it, Deshpande said.
Parents get frustrated, too. In some instances, they have the same developmental disability but were never diagnosed and think the learning problems are normal, Deshpande said. Following the diagnosis of Deshpande's oldest son, her youngest son was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. When figuring out his learning profile, Deshpande realized she had ADHD, too.
"Often, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree," Deshpande said. "I got diagnosed after looking at my kid's profile and realizing, 'Oh my God, that's exactly like me.' A lot of parents think, 'No, that's normal. I face that, too, so you should be OK with this.'"
Learnfully incorporates parents into its instruction programs in order to help them understand their kids' learning types and reduce their anxiety, Deshpande said.
In addition to establishing learning centers in Denver, Learnfully wants to expand its virtual programs. The company just brought on a head of business development to help scale its services. When raising venture capital, Learnfully has faced some skepticism from investors about how many families might be struggling with the issues that the startup seeks to address.
"They think it's a problem but just don't know how big of a problem it is, and they don't think that parents are motivated to help their kids," Deshpande said. "I think that when we start going for our Series A, we're not going to front-load them on the problem but instead talk about how we can make a difference and how much success we've had. I think they'll be pleasantly surprised to see that parents do want to help their kids."
