Industry · Education

Education software that actually ships.

We build the software learning runs on — LMS, student information systems, adaptive-learning engines, and admin automation that gives teachers time back — engineered for real enrollment loads and the systems schools already run.

Where AI helps, it assists the educator, not replaces them.

Fixed scope One accountable lead Production in 4–8 weeks

On top of the systems schools already run

LMS Adaptive Analytics
Educator as reviewer of record
SIS / SSO / rostering layer
Your systems of record & student data
Designed in
FERPA COPPA GDPR

The problem

Why education software is so hard to get right.

Because the constraints are unforgiving and unlike most B2B software. Usage spikes on a calendar everyone shares — the morning a term opens, the night an assignment is due — and a platform that buckles takes a whole cohort down with it.

The data is sensitive and regulated: student records sit under FERPA, COPPA for under-13s, and GDPR for any European learner, so a sloppy integration is a compliance incident, not just a bug. And a new tool has to talk to the SIS, the single sign-on, the rostering feed, and the gradebook already in place — or the people who administer it reject it.

Most EdTech fails to land for want of engineering and integration discipline, not ambition.

53 hrs

a week teachers work — roughly 15 outside their contracts, with administrative work among their top three stressors.

$10T

global education and training spend projected by 2030 — a market most EdTech still fails to land in.

RAND 2024 · HolonIQ ↗

What we build

What we build for education — and what each one changes.

Not one product — a set of systems that each earn their place by fixing a specific, repeated burden. For each: what it does, the benefit, and how it plays out.

01

Learning management systems (LMS)

Course delivery, assignments, grading, discussion, and progress tracking in one place — built to your pedagogy, not bent around an off-the-shelf tool.

Benefit — higher engagement, less time lost to clunky workflows.

Example: an instructor posts, collects, and returns graded feedback without exporting to a spreadsheet — reclaiming the evenings that workaround used to cost.

02

Student information systems (SIS) & admin

The system of record for enrollment, scheduling, attendance, transcripts, and reporting — wired to the feeds and compliance reports an institution lives on.

Benefit — administrative hours collapse, records stay accurate.

Example: one enrollment change updates roster, gradebook, and attendance at once — so the registrar isn't fixing three systems by hand at term start.

03

Adaptive & personalized learning

Content that adjusts to each learner's pace and gaps — sequencing the next lesson from the last, with the teacher seeing where each student stands.

Benefit — students spend time where they need it; teachers see who's stuck.

Example: a student missing one prerequisite is routed back to it, while the dashboard flags the five to check on first — so intervention happens before the unit test, not after.

04

Teacher admin & grading automation

Automated rostering, attendance, routine grading, progress reports, and parent communication — the repetitive paperwork that crowds out teaching.

Benefit — time returned to instruction.

Example: objective grading and a first-draft progress comment are generated for the teacher to approve in minutes, not a weekend of marking — educator always the final sign-off.

05

Assessment & analytics

Testing, item banks, proctoring workflows, and dashboards that turn raw scores into something an educator or administrator can act on.

Benefit — earlier, better-grounded calls on who needs help and what's working.

Example: a cohort dashboard surfaces a concept the whole class missed, so the next lesson re-teaches it rather than the gap compounding silently.

06

AI tutoring & study support (human-in-the-loop)

A grounded assistant for practice, explanation, and feedback — built to support the tutor or teacher, not to grade unsupervised or stand in for them.

Benefit — more support reaches more learners without removing the human.

Example: the AI suggests a guiding question for a live tutor to ask — the approach in Stanford's trial below — rather than handing the student an answer.

The measured impact

What the evidence says education software does — and why the human matters.

Independent, third-party findings on education technology, cited as evidence — not Silicon Prime client results. They also explain how we build: in education, the data says the human matters.

8%

Higher reading scores, tech in teachers' hands

where classrooms used data projectors — while exclusive student-only use correlates with significantly lower outcomes, across 72 countries of PISA data.

McKinsey, PISA analysis ↗

+4 pp

More topic mastery with an AI co-pilot

for students whose tutors used AI — up to +9 pp for students of lower-rated tutors, at ~$20 per tutor per year, in an RCT of 900 tutors and 1,800 students.

Stanford SCALE, Oct 2024 ↗

53 hrs

Worked per week by teachers

roughly 15 outside their contracts, with administrative work among the top three sources of job stress. The work admin automation gives back.

RAND, 2024 ↗

SURVIVES THE CALENDAR

Zero critical defects across four years — the reliability term start demands.

The reliability problem education faces at term start — a multi-site, software-critical operation that cannot go down — is one we've solved for years. The same evals-before-launch, staged-rollout, monitor-after discipline that holds a 200+ location business at twice-a-week releases is what an institution needs through enrollment season.

2×/wk
release cadence held in production
12+ yrs
a platform kept modernizing, never offline

The scope

What education software development with us covers.

The difference between an education platform that survives a term and one that gets uninstalled after the first enrollment spike.

01

Product & platform engineering

Custom LMS, SIS, course-authoring, and learner-facing web and mobile apps, built full-stack to your pedagogy and brand — not a template you'll outgrow.

02

Integrations & interoperability

We connect to the systems institutions already run — SIS feeds, SSO (SAML/OAuth), rostering standards (LTI, OneRoster, QTI), payment and gradebook — so adoption clears the administrators who'd otherwise block it.

03

Compliance-aware architecture

FERPA, COPPA, and GDPR are designed into data handling, access controls, and audit logging from the start — not retrofitted after a review. Every data path is documented so your team verifies rather than trusts.

04

Adaptive learning & analytics

Recommendation and sequencing logic, item banks, and reporting dashboards that turn raw activity into decisions an educator can act on — teacher's view first-class, per the evidence above.

05

Human-led AI features

Where AI genuinely helps — drafting feedback, summarizing progress, study support — we build it human-in-the-loop, grounded in your content, educator as reviewer of record. We'll also say where AI doesn't belong.

06

Scaling, reliability & support

Load engineering for term-start and deadline spikes, monitoring, and the runbooks and training that let your team run the platform after we step back.

What you get — all assigned to you under full work-for-hire IP transfer

A working platform in your own cloud tenant
The integration and compliance-aware data layer
Evaluation / test suites
Analytics and reporting dashboards
Runbooks and a trained team

How it runs

One accountable lead, fixed scope, no handoffs.

The same delivery model behind all our software and AI work, tuned for education. Most engagements reach production in 4–8 weeks, full work-for-hire IP assignment signed at kickoff.

Step 01

Discover

Scope the use case, the integrations and compliance requirements, and the academic outcomes you'll judge it on — with the honest "don't build this" call included.

Output: a ranked plan & the success metrics

Step 02

Design

Architecture, data model, and integration map; where AI is involved, the evaluation set and the human-in-the-loop checkpoints.

Output: a build plan & the interoperability/compliance design

Step 03

Build

Develop in your own cloud tenant, wired to your SIS, SSO, and rostering through governed integrations, with access controls and audit logging in place.

Output: a working platform behind your controls

Step 04

Deploy & enable

Pilot with a real classroom or cohort, then widen; adoption and outcomes measured against the kickoff targets, your team trained to operate it.

Output: a production platform & a team that owns it

The track record

The discipline education software actually requires.

We'll be direct about where our deepest first-party proof sits: our flagship engagements are in restaurants, sports tech, and marketplaces — not a named EdTech client we can put on this page. What carries over is the engineering discipline education software depends on, and we won't dress adjacent work up as something it isn't.

The reliability problem education faces at term start — a multi-site, software-critical operation that cannot go down — is one we've solved for years: we hold a 200+ location restaurant business (BJ's Restaurants) at twice-a-week releases with zero critical defects across four years.

And the longevity problem — a platform that has to keep working and modernizing for years without going offline — is one we've lived: we carried Bridge Athletic (now used by USC, the LA Rams, and MLB and MLS teams) from a 2012 startup build through twelve-plus years of modernization, never offline.

Silicon Prime is a Stanford-rooted Responsible AI lab, founded in 2011, run by founder Kelvin Tran — 20+ years of production engineering, personally accountable for every engagement.

LONGEVITY · 12+ YEARS LIVE

Bridge Athletic

A long-lived consumer platform carried from a 2012 startup build through twelve-plus years of modernization, never offline — now used by USC, the LA Rams, and MLB and MLS teams. The longevity an education platform you'll run for years needs.

MULTI-SITE · ZERO-DOWNTIME

BJ's Restaurants

A 200+ location operation held at twice-a-week releases with zero critical defects across four years — evals, staged rollout, monitoring. The exact reliability term start demands of an institution.

Why build your education software with us.

01

The human-led stance matches the evidence. The data above says education technology works best when it supports the educator — that's our founding charter, not a feature we bolted on, which is why our AI in classrooms assists and escalates rather than replacing the teacher.

02

Interoperability and compliance are treated as the product. SIS/SSO/rostering integration and FERPA/COPPA/GDPR-aware data handling are designed in from day one — the parts that decide whether administrators adopt or reject a tool.

03

Built to survive the calendar. We engineer for the enrollment and deadline spikes that take other platforms down, with the same reliability discipline that holds a 200-location operation steady.

04

Founder-led, one accountable lead, built to transfer. No account managers, no handoffs; code, evals, and IP are assigned to you, and your team is trained to run and extend the platform when we step back.

Where this connects

An education platform rarely stands alone.

It rests on the same engineering we bring to neighboring work.

Questions buyers ask before they build.

Do you build for K-12, higher education, or EdTech companies?+
All three, with the same engineering discipline and different constraints. K-12 leans on COPPA, parent communication, and district SIS integration; higher ed on enrollment systems, LTI/SSO, and scale; EdTech companies on a product that differentiates and a platform that survives growth. We scope which of those constraints actually bind your project before we build.
How do you handle student-data privacy — FERPA, COPPA, GDPR?+
By designing for it from the start, not retrofitting. Access controls, data minimization, audit logging, and documented data paths are built into the architecture; the platform runs in your own cloud tenant under your controls; and every engagement begins with an NDA and a security review. Education data is sensitive and regulated, and we treat it as such rather than treating compliance as a checkbox at the end.
Will it integrate with our existing SIS, LMS, and single sign-on?+
That's a core part of the work, not an afterthought. We integrate through the standards institutions run on — SAML/OAuth single sign-on, LTI, OneRoster, QTI, and direct SIS/gradebook feeds — because a tool that doesn't fit the existing stack gets rejected by the people who have to administer it. We map the required integrations in the discovery phase.
Do you use AI to teach or grade students?+
Only in a human-in-the-loop way, and we're conservative about it. The independent evidence is clear — Stanford's randomized trial (SCALE, 2024) found a roughly +4-percentage-point mastery gain came from AI assisting human tutors, and McKinsey's PISA analysis across 72 countries found technology in teachers' hands outperforms student-only use. So we build AI that drafts feedback, suggests guiding questions, and summarizes progress for an educator to review and approve — never an unsupervised grader or a replacement for the teacher.
You don't list an EdTech client — why should we trust you with this?+
Because we'd rather be straight than overclaim. We don't have a named education case study, and we won't dress our restaurant or sports-tech work up as one. What we do bring is the exact engineering education depends on: multi-site reliability that holds a 200+ location operation at zero critical defects over a 12-month window. Founder Kelvin Tran is personally accountable for the result.
Who owns the platform when you're done?+
Ownership is defined in each engagement's contract, and we scope it so the platform is yours to run without lock-in. In a typical build, the code, data models, evaluation suites, and documentation are assigned to you and your team is trained to operate and extend it. Keep us on a reduced retainer or take the keys — the engagement is built around a clean handover.
What does education software development cost, and how long does it take?+
Most engagements reach production in 4–8 weeks under a fixed-scope model with one accountable lead and payment tied to ROI. Build cost depends on scope — the use case, how many systems you integrate, the compliance surface, and whether adaptive or AI features are in play — and we model ongoing run cost (hosting, any AI token economics) before building, so the first invoice is a forecast you've already seen.
Why do so many education software pilots stall before they reach production?+
Because most pilots are built to prove features, not to clear a procurement committee. A platform can hit its uptime targets and win educators over, then stall at renewal because the documentation, defined governance ownership, integration into the existing SIS and single sign-on, and a total-cost-of-ownership model weren't ready when the CFO and IT director asked. We scope those procurement realities — documented data paths, run-cost model, interoperability, and a trained internal team — into the build from day one, so a successful pilot becomes a production rollout rather than a shelved experiment.

Thirty minutes · No pitch deck

Ready to build education software that survives term start?

Bring the platform you have in mind — an LMS, an SIS, adaptive learning, an educator-assisting AI — and we'll tell you honestly what it takes to build, where the integration and compliance work really is, and what it costs to run.