Garrett Smiley is the Co-Founder of Sora Schools, an education startup based in Atlanta. Sora is a virtual, project-based high school where students explore their interests, learn however is best for them, and gain exposure to future careers and fields of work

Prior to Sora, Garrett co-founded a charity which built wells in developing nations called Drops of Love. Garret also directed a university startup incubator called Core Founders at Georgia Tech, and started an education non-profit that worked with foster children to develop financial literacy called Flip. Garrett studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech. Garrett also worked as a Venture Partner at Contrary Capital where he scouted, invested in, and mentored startups in the Atlanta area

Key Takeaways:

00:21 What’s your Elevator Pitch?

00:58 What’s your Origin Story?

07:54 All About Sora Schools

14:15 What are your typical students there?

15:42 What’s the application and first day like in Sora?

19:32 Requirements in order to graduate from Sora

22:00 Roles of the Adults in Sora

25:34 Getting into College

27:01 Is Internship part of your high school experience?

32:49 Metaphor comparing Sora School and Conventional Education

Quotes:

"How do you solve a system issue, you create another system, right?"

"We take a really different approach to education, but we don't instead make people sit and, you know, control their seat time, if you will."

"They should have in-person interaction, but why are we shipping kids off at school just that they can receive a human YouTube video lecture?"

"We're hoping to create a lot more paths out of high school. So families have more options."

"Before COVID happened, we were having to do meet ups. So we're hosting meetups every once in a while they are going to museums together, and this is something we want to continue to do."

"It's so funny. People don't realize, like this is a fairly recent invention, like in the grand scheme of things of what we consider schooling is still novel and, and it worked. But unfortunately, the whole world has changed."

Social Links:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwsmiley/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/gw_smiles

Sora Schools - https://www.linkedin.com/company/soraschools/

Website - https://soraschools.com/