Introducing SSC
학생
We also like calling ourselves Haksaeng (학생), which is the Korean word for "student". Most of us are college students based in Seoul building meaningful tools for students, one campus at a time.
Built for students, by students (finally)
Well designed software shouldn't be limited to enterprise. Modern LMS tools are rusty and layered with countless dispensable features. Seriously, no student in their right mind uses the social networking features on Blackboard or CampusGroups. All of this is because LMS tools were built with school admins in mind, not students, so there is a market incentive to stuff your app with as many features as possible to justify enterprise prices during sales calls and school budget committees can "get their money's worth".
Our approach
So are we creating an LMS of our own? No. Schools are already hopelessly dependent on Canvas and PowerSchool. Most of our projects are just solutions to common student inconveniences, actual everyday inconveniences that remain unaddressed by LMS such as wanting a convenient way to organize your extracurricular certificates or getting ghosted by alumni. We intentionally try to keep the technical complexity of our projects as lightweight as possible. The core philosophy behind our projects is to ship something that works for students in the most rudimental sense. This philosophy grew from our previous failures when we over-engineered a solution.
We aren’t here to build some student superapp. Nor are we just another one of those startups creating AI homework assistants snuggly wrapped in the latest GPT. Simple solutions like micro-sites or a portal site packed with sparklingly highlighted hyperlinks can genuinely help students by giving them some sense of direction, some starting point.
Breaking down knowledge silos
The internet is powerful because of its ability to make individuals aware of the existence of alternatives. Just as it can provide us with alternative recipes and fun videos, it can also flag alternative forms of education and learning. But so many students and parents are blissfully unaware of the existence of these alternatives. We think cram schools and other legacy educational institutions maintain their monopoly by preserving a generation of uninformed students, by lauding themselves as the only, exclusive pathway to education. LMS tools and badly designed software are just a symptom of this pervasive problem.
Imagine what sort of thoughts would go through a student's head if they were at least aware that these opportunities, communities and events even existed?
Post Kumon Stress Disorder
SSC started, like most great projects do, from repressed childhood trauma. Many of us grew up believing that studying 15 hours a day within the confines of our cram schools, hagwons, was just a part of life. The routine became so normalized that somewhere along the way, we lost ourselves and forgot there were worlds outside our own.
We think there is something inherently wrong with the fact that one's access to extracurriculars and digital education is dependent on one's birth lottery. We can't solve the larger issue of wealth disparity, but the least we can do is target the information gap and create an equal starting point for all students.