Today we’d like to introduce you to Indra Sofian.
Hi Indra, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I grew up in a small town in northwest Georgia. Early in life, I learned that the secret to doing well in school was just being good at memorization, so I’ve almost always been a good student and made my parents happy. School was basically my whole life and personality–but I worked hard and got the opportunity to attend Georgia Tech when I graduated in 2014.
When I graduated high school, I went to study Business Administration at Georgia Tech in 2014. College was an eye-opening experience, but perhaps not in the way I expected it to be. I learned so much there, but not as much from the classes—from the people, the clubs I joined, the internships I had, and the first business I started. It was called Elevate Media, a video production agency. Together with my best friend Wesley, we produced dozens of videos for companies across the country—we even got to work with Coca Cola on a project. I learned a lot about business from that first company, honestly more than what I was learning in business school. My classes felt disconnected from what I actually wanted to do, nor did they help me figure out who I wanted to be.
It was the beginning of 2018 when I had this realization, a semester away from my graduation. Coincidentally, that’s when Sora first began.
One Saturday night, Wesley, another friend of mine named Garrett, and I were sitting in our apartment on campus. We were talking about our high school experiences and reflecting on our time there and all the stuff we hated about our old schools. And at one point in the conversation, we just started talking about what WE would have done differently if we had been in charge of our high schools. We had this whiteboard in our apartment, and I got up and just started writing a list.
After that night, we kept this group chat where we continued the conversation. Most of what we talked about revolved around the problems with the design of high school: how the traditional school system doesn’t really focus on developing independence or creativity in students, how schools don’t really teach you what will prepare you to succeed in the world today, how high stakes testing, the lecture-based model, and even the schedule aren’t conducive to your learning. After a few months, we started reaching out to talk to people in education—teachers, edtech founders, people in policy—to get some insight into the problems. Through these conversations, we started forming some basic hypotheses about the problems with the way our schools were designed.
In the middle of 2018, we were at a crossroads. We had identified these problems with traditional high schools and how they were designed, but now, what were we going to do about it? Through our conversations, we learned how hard it was to change existing schools. On top of that, the things we wanted to change were systemic and interdependent. If we wanted to change the pedagogy of the classroom, we had to change the curriculum. If we wanted to change the curriculum, we had to change how schools did assessments. And so on and so on. We were stuck.
But then we had a thought: since it’s so hard to change schools, why don’t we just start our own? Like, a whole new kind of school?
And that’s what we did.
We started with a simple question: what is the purpose of school?
To answer that question, we had to get rid of all of our assumptions and pre-conceptions about school: forget the curriculum, the classes, the schedule, the tests, everything. We started with a blank slate, and with a lot of inspiration from our reading and conversations with educators, we designed the first version of Sora: a project-based high school in Atlanta where students could study whatever they wanted based on their interests. At Sora, we cared not just about the content of what students learn but their mindsets and soft skills, like their critical thinking, communication abilities, and independence. Our curriculum would be focused on real-world problems and applicable contexts. We believe that schools should instill students with curiosity, grit, and agency so they can live their lives with purpose and navigate the world with all of its problems and challenges.
In October, we announced we were launching Sora Schools to the world with a press release in Hypepotamous, a local startup media outlet. My mom called me later that day and I had to convince her that I wasn’t crazy for starting a school.
Through many challenges and struggles, we managed to raise $150,000, enroll 7 students, and hire our first 3 faculty to start the school in Fall 2019. Our first year was all about rapid experimentation and iteration. We learned that many of the elements of our program we had planned just didn’t actually work in practice. In the first year at Sora, we used to joke that we made changes to our educational model every 2 weeks. We held something called Roadmap Club on Fridays, which was basically the founders telling the students what we were planning to change next and getting student input on the ideas we had. We constantly worked on improving the model and shipping the next iteration—and, over time, Sora became much more substantial.
Then, in March 2020, the US went into lockdown due to COVID-19.
In those days, I talked to every parent and interviewed every student. We didn’t see any big spikes in traffic or growth until after the spring when people realized COVID wasn’t going away. In the beginning of the summer, the number of inquiries we’d get increased about 4x every week. Some people didn’t even bother submitting a form on the website—they just called our phone number, which at the time was just a Google Voice that linked to my cell phone. I would be on back to back calls sometimes for an entire day.
By Fall 2020, we had raised $2.7M from some of the best investors in the world, and our school had grown to 38 students. At that size, Sora finally felt more like a real school. It wasn’t all pretty, of course. A lot of things we did when we had 7 students didn’t work for 38 students. We had to quickly hire more people to build the foundation of our school and processes. We created a formal admissions process with an application. We built our own learning management system in-house. We, fortunately, became accredited that fall by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, and that gave us a lot more credibility. In the spring, we graduated our first three students and sent them off to college.
In 2021, we experienced another level of growth and scale. We grew to 150 students that fall, and we successfully raised $18.5M from more great investors. Our team is now 50+ full-time people.
Today, Sora has grown up from the weird, little idea it used to be. We’re now a middle school and a high school, serving students grades 7 through 12. Many of our students are from Atlanta, but we have students enrolled from across the country. We’ve begun to build a name for ourselves in the education world. Students have graduated and are set to do some pretty cool things: some are getting jobs right out of high school, some have been accepted into colleges like Georgia Tech or the Rhode Island School of Design. We have developed a much more sophisticated program to ensure academic breadth and challenge our students more and more. Our school community is incredibly vibrant today—students have made good friendships with each other and their educators.
Now, Sora is on its way to building the future of the school and creating a new kind of global education system, one where students can become thoughtful, creative, and purposeful individuals to solve today’s biggest problems and challenges.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There were plenty of challenges!
For one, in the early days, my co-founders and I had to convince people who didn’t know us to enroll their students at a school with a strange new concept that didn’t exist yet. We also didn’t really know how to market to parents or where to even begin looking. We didn’t have money, so everything in those days was super low cost, hands-on marketing: sneaking into events to table for Sora, hosting information sessions in libraries, handing out flyers in the city.
We also struggled to raise money in the beginning. Investors always liked our vision, but never really saw the path to get there like we did–they assumed we would mostly attract existing homeschooling families and never break into the mainstream family. But we grew a lot faster than they–and to be honest, we–expected, COVID happened, and suddenly everything fell into place for us to raise millions of dollars to make our vision of building a new model for school a reality.
Scaling has also been a challenge. Running a school of 150 students is very different than running a school 5x smaller–we’ve had to build so many more processes, policies, and programs to serve our families. Even managing the company itself has had a learning curve. With 50+ people, we’ve had to learn how to run a whole organization, from coordinating cross-functional teams to communicating vision and strategy to people to building a strong, values-based culture.
As you know, we’re big fans of Sora Schools. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Sora is a virtual, accredited, student-centered middle and high school that empowers students to explore their interests and discover who they are.
Students grow by mastering skills and concepts in projects that reflect the real world while preparing them for the challenges of their future. They learn these through hands-on projects and exciting Learning Expeditions–our version of classes–that they get to design and choose. That’s one of the most important elements of our program: agency. In our program, students have an incredible amount of choice in what and how they learn. That means an education at Sora can look quite different from student to student–the “average” student might be building motorized bicycle in their backyard, learning about philosophy in popular anime, or dissecting a shark to learn about marine wildlife. We believe in teaching students how to be independent thinkers with a strong internal locus of control that can engage critically and thoughtfully with the world.
All of this happens in a vibrant online community of students across the country. Students form strong friendships and relationships with other students and faculty in tight-knit cohorts. They meet, learn, and work together daily through a thoughtful blend of asynchronous and synchronous activities and sessions.
Students leave our program ready for their next step in life, whether it’s attending college, starting their career, or whatever else it may be.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Adaptability.
Starting a company with a new kind of product or business model invariably means venturing into unknown territory. That means most of your assumptions are going to be wrong, only a small percentage of the advice you get from people is going to be helpful, and the only tried-and-true way to find solutions to problems is trial and error. Products and solutions change–entrepreneurs have to be used to that. I’ve gotten where I am today by my willingness to experiment and fail often and my tenacity to see things through despite the changes and challenges.
Pricing:
- Flexible Tuition: $3,600 – $12,000 per year
Contact Info:
- Website: www.soraschools.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/sora_schools
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soraschools
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/soraschools
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG0dp2-srWwcBsit9Tpiu4w
Image Credits
Indra Sofian, Eric Sun
