An interview with Eden Gold
How important and yet how hard it is to get actionable insights from customer feedback. We all know that customer feedback is a king. But customer feedback is always heavily biased by existing product and usage patterns and to get through this bias to raw insight is arguably the most important job of an early stage founder.
The landscape of education is undergoing a profound transformation, propelled by technological advancements, pedagogical innovations, and a deepened understanding of learning diversities. Traditional classrooms are evolving, and new modes of teaching and learning are emerging to better prepare students for the complexities of the modern world. This series will take a look at the groundbreaking work being done across the globe to redefine education. As a part of this interview series, we had the pleasure to interview Alexey Pokatilo.
Alexey Pokatilo is the founder and CEO of Litero AI, an EdTech company revolutionizing academic writing support through AI-powered tutoring. With over 16 years of experience in education technology, he has launched and scaled multiple global learning platforms, including successful tutoring marketplaces serving U.S. college students. A serial entrepreneur and angel investor, Alexey is passionate about solving the “2 Sigma Problem” in education, making high-quality, personalized learning accessible to all. He blends deep industry expertise with a mission-driven approach to help students worldwide master skills and thrive in the age of AI.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share the “backstory” behind what brought you to this particular career path?
I was 19 and still in my second year at the London School of Economics when I launched my first company, and, by coincidence, it was also in the EdTech space. Together with my then co-founder we launched a platform connecting students with tutors. We focused on serving the US college student market, but tutors were hired across the world. The idea was to make personal tutoring and academic support more affordable and accessible. Back then, it felt more like an exciting side project with my best friend than a carefully planned career step.
Sixteen years later, I’ve experienced the full rollercoaster of building educational technology products: the early wins, the painful failures, and the occasional breakthroughs. Along the way, my motivation shifted from “this is an interesting business” to “this is my mission.” Today, my work is driven by a deep commitment to solving what researchers call the “2 Sigma Problem” — the closest thing education has to a holy grail. It’s no longer just about building a product; it’s about changing how students everywhere can learn and thrive.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
One of the most memorable moments of my career happened in December 2022. I was in a strategy session. It was a multi-week exercise with my executive team at my previous company when ChatGPT was released. Within days, it was everywhere. The speed at which it gained attention was staggering, and the implications for education were immediately clear. This wasn’t just another tool; it was a paradigm shift that could redefine our entire industry.
What made it even more striking was that the day before, we’d finished our “risks and threats” exercise, and AI hadn’t even made the list. At that point, it wasn’t a credible threat, yet less than 24 hours later, everything had changed. We scrapped the week’s agenda and spent the following days rebuilding our strategy from the ground up, assessing both the risks and the unprecedented opportunities this new technology created. That pivot directly led to the creation of Litero. The lesson? In today’s world, disruption doesn’t send a calendar invite, it arrives unannounced, and sometimes overnight. The best defense is to stay flexible, curious, and ready to reinvent yourself at a moment’s notice.
Can you briefly share with our readers why you are an authority in the education field?
In education especially, the moment you stop questioning, you stop improving. That said, my perspective comes from over 16 years of deep, hands-on experience, creating, testing, and scaling educational technology, while closely observing how students actually interact with it.
I’ve worked with learners from vastly different backgrounds, cultures, and education systems, and the patterns are strikingly similar: many students struggle to get the support they need in a system that wasn’t designed with their day-to-day realities in mind. Too often, education is built around institutional convenience rather than learner success. I believe the best education products — like the best teachers — start with empathy. You have to design from the ground up for the end user: the student. That means listening to them, testing with them, and iterating based on what genuinely helps them learn. My credibility in this space doesn’t come from titles or credentials, it comes from spending nearly two decades on the frontlines, building solutions that try to meet students where they actually are.
Can you identify some areas of the US education system that are going really great?
Overall, it’s surprising how average the outcomes of the U.S. education system can be, especially considering the vast resources available and the country’s global leadership in innovation, business and economics. Of course, top universities do an excellent job attracting talented students and helping them grow both academically and through strong networks, which is hard to match. However, beyond the Ivy League and a handful of other prestigious institutions, challenges become much more apparent, especially at the level of average community colleges, where many issues start to surface.
Can you identify the key areas of the US education system that should be prioritized for improvement? Can you explain why those are so critical?
Like in many other areas, I think the main room for improvement in the US education system can come from finding the right balance between regulation and competition. There clearly needs to be some clear, but very minimalistic regulatory environment. But for the larger part I think colleges and schools have to be given much more freedom to compete and strive to produce better results for their ultimate client — the students. Even before ChatGPT a lot of tech solutions and learning approaches seemed outdated and rooted in legacy as opposed to reality. Now with universal adoption of AI, knowledge and information is being rapidly commoditised. Schools and colleges need to innovate and experiment to adapt and help students acquire new skills. This can’t be done top down from college boards or state / federal officials, this innovation needs to come from the bottom up, from enthusiastic teachers who are keen to do a great job and really help students stay relevant and confident in tomorrow’s world. Adopting new technology, for instance, including AI learning tools, has to be made much easier and faster for universities to make up their own minds about.
Please tell us all about the innovative educational approaches that you are using. What is the specific problem that you aim to solve, and how have you addressed it?
Problem: Academic writing today often focuses more on assessment than on actual learning. This can unfairly disadvantage students who struggle to clearly express their ideas in writing. Additionally, the feedback they receive is frequently superficial and doesn’t support deeper improvement.
The approach we use is based on the well-established concept of “mastery learning,” first described by Benjamin Bloom in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This method has proven to be highly effective because it focuses on the idea that students learn best when they can iterate and practice until they achieve true mastery of a subject. Instead of moving on regardless of understanding, learners receive immediate, actionable feedback and continue refining their skills or work until they reach a high level of proficiency. Applied to academic writing, this means providing students with instant, detailed feedback on their papers and allowing them to revise repeatedly until their writing genuinely meets the required standard. This process encourages deeper learning rather than simply completing assignments for assessment purposes.
How my product helps to address it: At the core of Litero is an AI-powered Tutor designed to pre-grade papers and deliver precise feedback on what is unclear or needs improvement. This tool supports both students and teachers by enhancing the quality and depth of feedback, helping students develop their writing skills more effectively. Importantly, AI is not meant to replace human instructors but to serve as a collaborative partner in the learning process.
With the rise of large language models (LLMs), access to raw knowledge is becoming commoditized. Memorizing facts and concepts is no longer enough, since this information can be retrieved instantly and reliably from AI. What truly matters now is how students apply those concepts creatively to generate new ideas, insights, and innovations. To prepare students for this new reality, we need to teach them to collaborate with AI across all tasks, starting with writing, which is an area where LLMs excel.
In what ways do you think your approach might shape the future of education? What evidence supports this?
According to our surveys, over 80% of students regularly use ChatGPT or similar LLMs, and I believe the true number is closer to 90%, as some respondents may be hesitant to admit it. It’s inevitable that AI will become an integral part of how students complete homework, essays, and assignments. At this point, trying to resist or debate this trend feels futile. Instead, we need to embrace and encourage collaborative use of AI within environments specifically designed for that purpose.
I firmly believe the future of education lies in having personalized, adaptable AI tutors available to every student around the clock. This would allow each learner to progress at their own pace and in their preferred style, whether visual, narrative, or otherwise. Teachers would shift into more of a mentoring and supervisory role. Litero is built to be a part of this future, helping to shape an education system that truly supports every student’s unique learning journey.
How do you measure the impact of your innovative educational practices on students’ learning and well-being?
We measure the impact of our educational practices primarily through interviews with students to gather qualitative feedback. Additionally, we’re about to launch a mood check feature within Litero, which will be used at the beginning and end of each working session. This will help us track students’ emotional well-being and engagement alongside their learning progress, giving us a more holistic understanding of how our approach supports them.
What challenges have you faced in implementing your educational innovations, and how have you overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced is building trust around the use of AI in education. Initially, there was significant resistance from teachers, and although it has decreased, some skepticism still remains. We’re actively working to overcome this by developing unique features designed to address these trust concerns comprehensively. Our goal is to create a tool that educators feel confident using, knowing it truly supports both teaching and learning.
Keeping in mind the “Law of Unintended Consequences” can you see any potential drawbacks of this innovation that people should think more deeply about?
It’s very likely that we will become increasingly reliant on technology, and AI in particular, in many aspects of our lives. This pattern has repeated itself throughout history and will almost certainly continue. Collaborating with AI means offloading some of our work to machines. Just as we’ve moved away from paper maps to depend on Google Maps for navigation, we will likely become dependent on AI for tasks like writing and research.
I encourage everyone to reflect critically on the potential consequences of this shift, especially parents of younger children who need to consider how early exposure to AI might impact development. While this process is almost unstoppable, it’s crucial that we remain aware and intentional about how we integrate AI into our lives, just as we’ve had to be mindful about introducing phones, gadgets, and social media.
What are your “5 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started”?
- How fast AI would grow and reshape industries — faster than anyone expected.
- The true power of recommendation and influencer marketing in driving tech product adoption.
- How important and yet how hard it is to get actionable insights from customer feedback. We all know that customer feedback is a king. But customer feedback is always heavily biased by existing product and usage patterns and to get through this bias to raw insight is arguably the most important job of an early stage founder.
- How important it is to have not only the culture, but a productive and safe environment that encourages internal debate and plurality of opinions.
- Focus, focus, focus. Early on everything seems possible and important. This is not true of course. And the sooner you make an educated guess or an informed bet on what could really matter, the sooner you get the focus and pick up crucial speed.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite life lesson quote is, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.” It’s often attributed to Henry Ford. This quote reminds me that nobody is born an expert, and most successful entrepreneurs aren’t genetic geniuses. What really matters is believing in yourself and your ideas, and then working relentlessly to make them happen. There is something empowering and intrinsically motivating about this quote. It encourages me to remind myself that the outcome of any challenge or a competition is almost never pre-determined. Business history is full of examples of unlikely winners and unthinkable demises of former hegemons.
We are blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
I personally admire a lot of things about Grammarly. It’s a cool product that was in many ways ahead of its time back when they started. I would love to have a quality conversation with Alex Shevchenko for example about their journey and how they believe writing tools would evolve in the era of accessible AI.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Readers can follow our work through Litero’s official website at https://litero.ai/ , as well as our LinkedIn page — https://www.linkedin.com/company/litero-ai/ where we share updates and insights.
Thank you so much for these insights! This was so inspiring!
Alexey Pokatilo Of Litero AI On Innovative Approaches That Are Transforming Education was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.