#StartupsEverywhere: Adrian Martinez, Founder, Infinilearn
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
From Minecraft to AI EdTech
At only 17, Adrian Martinez is looking to make learning more fun. His AI-powered software, Infinilearn, is a gamified personal learning app designed for homeschooled kids and teens like himself. We sat down with Adrian to discuss his app, his use of open-source AI models, the help he’s received along the way, and more.
Tell us about your background. What led you to Infinilearn?
Video games—particularly Minecraft—gave me a hacker mentality. Kids can learn a lot of computer science from delving into Minecraft because it’s very easy to code and upload your mods as well as running your servers. As a result, I started learning web development at 10 years old, and I’m a fast learner.
This eventually led to my mom pulling me out of traditional schooling because I wasn’t learning anything new. Academically at that point, I was three grades ahead. We built a personal learning curriculum.
During one of my research projects on the Los Angeles United School District, I learned that students are not retaining information from their teachers, verbal engagement is horrifically low, and the average student retains about 3 percent of what their teacher says. I instantly saw the opportunity to fill that learning gap. I identified 50 investors to reach out to and tried to raise $10 million. The ones I managed to get meetings with all said no because I didn’t have a plan or relevant experience.
So I decided that I didn’t need any investors, I would just start building the platform myself. I spent two months on it and expected it to blow up when I published it, but it didn't. I developed a more realistic perspective after I was accepted into an incubator program last December.
I talked to a bunch of people who were in the EdTech space, and I learned a lot about startups. I took everything I learned and pivoted Infinilearn to a freemium model targeting homeschoolers like myself, and it blew up overnight. It got over 100,000 views and more than 100 daily active users in the first week. By my demo day, I had the most active app in our entire cohort sitting at around 350 daily active users. Currently, Infinilearn is sitting at about 500 daily active users and around 1500 users total.
What is the work you all are doing at Infinilearn?
There are two parts to Infinilearn: gamification and personalized learning. Users level up after each lesson and progress is tracked on leaderboards, there’s also streaks and quests, these are components that you’d expect on similar apps like Duolingo and similar video games. Gamification greatly increases our daily engagement. Our AI, which utilizes Meta’s Llama models, helps personalize user experience. When someone signs up they add their likes and dislikes, and then use that information to create the most engaging learning experience possible.
We’re also working on a subjective argument function; that’s one of my favorite features. As we get into the humanities, some multiple-choice questions have answers that become subjective. For example, 'What was the worst event in the past 20 years?' Different people will have different answers depending on their context and values. Users will be able to argue why they think their answer is correct and two separate AI agents will analyze their response.
You said you use Llama models at the core of Infinilearn, why did you decide to build on an open-source model?
The main reason I use Llama is for cost-effectiveness and the power to customize the model for my needs. I had started off using closed models, but they would sometimes disregard my instructions and just give the student the answer, which is definitely not what you want in an education platform. If I wanted to fix an issue on a closed model, I’d have to submit a bug report and then wait. Who knows if it’ll be addressed at all. On an open-source model like Llama, I can go in, and tweak the responses, without relying on indefinite wait times.
Infinilearn is currently a one person operation, how do you handle any potential inappropriate content shared on your platform?
Every message exchanged between users and our model is processed by a GPT model that analyzes it within the context of the entire conversation. This is the most convenient way for me to do content moderation as a team of one. It determines what is not appropriate for these age groups. Along with messages, it analyzes every single input of publicly shared content—like usernames and profile pictures—to make sure that everything is appropriate.
You’ve entered the startup ecosystem at much younger age than most do, was there a defining moment that inspired you to make that entrance?
When I was 14, I went through Microsoft for Startups. They’re incredible; I could talk about them all day. They were the only major company that initially believed in me.They gave me a $1,000 grant and the freedom to go build something in the software space. Most people I talk to never knew that Microsoft had a program like this; if I didn’t come across it, I definitely would not be here.
We’ve seen a lot of policymakers at the state and federal levels try to limit what young Internet users can do online, which would require websites and apps to verify the ages of their users. How would those kinds of requirements impact Infinilearn?
It makes sense that policymakers are concerned about kids being exposed to some parts of the Internet, but we can’t let educational tools get lumped into that conversation. I wouldn’t want to implement age verification and to limit Infinilearn to older ages. Rules like that would force me to be a gatekeeper to students who are ahead in the game, like I was. If someone who is eight or nine wants to learn, we should let them. Infinilearn is an education app, and children of all ages should be able to use it without any gatekeeping.
Are there any local, state, or federal startup issues that you think should receive more attention from policymakers?
I wish there was less red tape for entrepreneurs under 18. I get we're trying to protect kids from harm, but all this legislation makes it really difficult, and it doesn’t work anyway, because we find workarounds. You could argue that people who aren't 18 aren't mature enough to run a company, but that's been proved wrong, time, and time again.
Despite all the work I’m putting in, I can’t legally have a corporation until I turn 18. I can't legally have a business bank account until I’m 18. Being a startup founder is fun, but I wish there were more pathways that allowed us flexibility, and didn’t require us to name our parents as official CEOs.
What are your goals for Infinilearn moving forward?
By the end of the summer, I hope to have 100,000 users. I hope to get Infinilearn into traditional education in two years or so, but there’s a bunch of policies—like Common Core and general requirements—that add a lot of dead weight to that goal. I remember one school district told me I needed at least a million users in order to operate in their classrooms. In the meantime, I want to keep scaling to independent school students and focus on building the best educational app I can.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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