Paul Mishkin is the founder and CEO of IXL learning. His first vision started out as Quia Web which is a tool allowing educators the capability to create they own interactive materials for their students. It helped inspire the “create-your-own” concept as many educators turned to different types of educational content for their teaching. Quia Web came out in 1998 and was instantly popular as an education site during the early days of the Internet. Next the company developed Quia books which is an interactive online textbook and workbook platform used primarily for language learning.
Recently, the company focused on math to develop an online learning platform for math practice that has become the most popular subscription-based learning site for K-12 learners. It has now expanded to offer English language arts practice in grammar, vocabulary, and spelling.
Paul Mishkin has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Harvard and also has studied educational software design at Harvard Graduate School of Education. He began his career as a software engineer at Oracle (company that specializes in developing and marketing computer software and enterprise software products). Many of IXL’s top leaders are from Oracle including their executive vice president. All of the leaders of the IXL team have extensive experience in their field or hold a degree and Masters from reputable institutions. Their team also includes teachers that support certain areas of sales and customer support.
Learning about the team that works for the company, many of the members have many years experience with other companies and so it is clear this entrepreneur surrounded himself with like-minded individuals who had similar work experience and future goals in developing web-based technologies and creating new innovations. Also, from what the company has generated one initial idea can evolve to a product leading to other products expanding one’s company.
