Block Dojo alumni target AI tutoring, referral hiring on BSV

Global online tutoring is a massive industry, with one study projecting it will hit $60.6 billion by 2027. However, it lacks personalization for diverse students’ needs. Michael Olagunju is targeting this market with ExamSolutions, a startup that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain to offer the best and most accessible online tutoring to its users.

ExamSolutions is an “AI-powered personal tutor that empowers students and teachers to achieve their educational goals,” founder Olagunju tells CoinGeek Backstage reporter Claire Celdran. The platform boasts high success rates, including 95% of its users hitting grades A and B in their exams.

ExamSolutions is an alumnus of the Block Dojo incubation program in London. Since it graduated, it has evolved massively, including raising a pre-seed round and launching an AI software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that became quickly popular. Today, the platform has over 15,000 beta users.

The company has also signed a large-language model (LLM) partnership with the two biggest players in global AI: Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and OpenAI. Announcing the partnership five months ago, the company noted that by improving AI models’ maths performance, it was “accelerating personalized tutoring opportunities, expanding academic support, and making quality education accessible to more learners globally.”

Olagunju’s origin story stretches back to his school days when his maths grades took a big hit after he started his A-levels as his parents couldn’t afford a personal tutor for him. Luckily, his mother found an online platform offering relatable videos for students. This helped him to get back on course and after graduating with a first-class honours degree in Maths, he set out to provide the same service to others.

Olagunju revealed that his company is in discussions with ‘blue-chip AI companies’ interested in refining their learning models. ExamSolutions curates its students’ and tutors’ data to these firms, who then use it to better their AI models.

“I don’t want to mention any names, but we’ve got some plans with some big companies.”

Zote: Communal referral hiring on BSV

While Olagunju assists students in getting better grades, Francisco Cordoba supports companies in hiring faster and better. Cordoba is the founder of Zote, an HR company that incentivizes users to refer suitable candidates for a role and receive a share of the bounty.

With the platform, the employer sets up a bounty, and Zote curates the opportunity for the right target market. Its users can refer their friends, acquaintances, colleagues or even LinkedIn contacts whom they believe are best suited to the role. Once the company hires its preferred candidate, the referrers get a piece of the bounty.

The BSV blockchain is central to Zote’s referral process. Being immutable and transparent, BSV allows everyone along the entire hiring chain to verifiably get the right share for their efforts. With BSV, even the slightest effort can be rewarded, as it’s the only enterprise blockchain that supports micropayments.

Cordoba is a seasoned blockchain entrepreneur and the recipient of the MIT Innovator Award for his contributions to blockchain technology. Having built decentralized applications (dApps) on various chains, he believes BSV stands out because developers can deploy their applications at speed and without breaking because its fees are the lowest in the enterprise blockchain world.

Cordoba told CoinGeek Backstage that his immediate plans are to grow his company’s revenue to at least $1 million by the end of 2025. He also intends to expand globally, with the United States market being his next target.

He also revealed that the company currently works with a United Kingdom industry body with over 120,000 members who want to use Zote’s technology as a white-label service.

“This year, they will be able to launch it to their own members, and we’ll make money in the process,” he said.

In order for artificial intelligence (AI) to work right within the law and thrive in the face of growing challenges, it needs to integrate an enterprise blockchain system that ensures data input quality and ownership—allowing it to keep data safe while also guaranteeing the immutability of data. Check out CoinGeek’s coverage on this emerging tech to learn more why Enterprise blockchain will be the backbone of AI.

Watch: sCrypt Hackathon students realize there’s more to blockchain