My startup just had an angel round and we basically want to spend it on a critical hire. I’m torn on what it is. We’ve built a unique, gamified intelligent tutoring system, essentially a video game for learning the MCAT. Our platform is an intelligent tutoring system which diagnoses student weaknesses, assigns them content and videos in fun games, and then uses AI to tutor them on topics they struggle with. It’s been a pretty scrappy few months: I was about to go to medical school but pivoted to coding and design (with cursor, it's like giving a monkey a machine gun); my cofounder is full stack and does backend and set up early analytics; and we’ve have two-three interns to help us with other stuff.
But here’s what we need a hire for:
The most fascinating part about our service is that it's built like a sensor network: from the beginning to the end, every interaction with our website is tracked and used to update the model's understanding of student knowledge. Every interaction on our platform is a data point – highlights, answer changes, even the coins they earn. This gives us unprecedented insight into how top performers master complex material. We're capturing the real-time cognitive processes of the highest achievers, not just their scores. We are leveraging insights from behavioral economics to optimize learning through a proprietary coin system – what students prioritize, and how they respond to incentives. For example, we learned that higher-performing students on MCAT CARs reading passages actually highlight less rather than more, turning theory of excellent test-taking into data-driven insights.
However, we need an elite hire NOW. We got a lot of traction early on but the market for MCAT prep peaks from March-September as 86% of people take the MCAT then. We’re in a discord with a few hundred users basically iterating and building as fast as possible but if the data systems above are set up VERY well we can learn a ton from this market peak and gain a critical lead in ITS architecture by EOY.
I’ve settled on “Software Engineer, Data & Learning Systems” but I feel like that’s incorrect. Our weaknesses are a lack of experience, our code is kinda meh, we're shipping so fast things break constantly, and we’ve basically been running on scraps for months (and will continue to do so). Other devs will go wide. We need someone to go DEEP here, as this is the most valuable part of our website: learning how top students learn.
Who are we searching for?
WEBSITE: mymcat.ai THEORY: mymcat.ai/blog/weakness-finding-algorithm
It sounds like you need a couple of people, because you have a couple of problems. The programmer who
1. Understands machine learning and data science, and can action-ably put code in place that utilizes all of the data you're collecting 2. Understands the value of testing and will fix broken windows as he goes ( your "things break constantly" problem ) 3. Can write high-quality code 4. Can move at startup speed while doing all of the above 5. Can spin up at your workplace in time to make an impact around your nearest deadlines of... two or three months from now
surely exists!
But they sound very expensive.
Why:
In my experience, data scientists and machine learning folk are very scientist. Especially at the master+ level, they can make a huge impact on their area of expertise for sure! The drawback -- _usually_, and I will say I'm painting broad strokes here based on a lot of the people I've met and worked with -- is that they're not used to building production software and keeping up with demands of testing and high code quality.
On the other hand, enterprise developers are very good at the high code quality and testing part, but generally don't have the scientific depth to jump in on machine learning / data science projects. Again, broad strokes.
If you want someone who can do both, they usually have a _ton_ of years of experience, because! It takes a ton of years to learn how to do these things well.
So that person probably exists, they're probably quite expensive, though.
If you do wind up with more than one person and you cannot hire them at the same time, you will sacrifice in one aspect for gain in the other. If you hire one person, you run the risk of dragging them through the dirt, because you're going to be stretching their talent thin. I've noticed that the type of person with the level of experience to do the jobs you want don't like to move fast and run themselves ragged.
All this to say --
it sounds like you have lots to do. Be careful!