“Making education smarter and enabling more people to enjoy quality education.”
This is the vision of edtech startup Freewheelin. Driven by this vision, Freewheelin has revolutionized the education sector, earning recognition for its technological prowess and influence, including being named "The World's Best EdTech Company" by TIME magazine in 2024.
Freewheelin reached a major turning point in 2024. It expanded beyond its B2B focus, which primarily targeted teachers, academies, and schools, to launch services targeting individual students. This year, in 2025, it will leverage its AI technology to expand its services to a wider range of subjects and embark on a global expansion.
Following these business changes, Freewheelin's growth can be divided into three phases: the first phase, which began with the company's founding in 2017 and focused on its B2B service, "mathflat." The second phase, which entered the university market with the launch of "pulley campus" in 2024, and the third phase, which began this year with the expansion of various AI-based courses and global expansion.
We met with CEO Kisung Kwon at the Freewheelin office in Gwanak-gu, Seoul, to hear about his educational philosophy of "providing educational opportunities to more people," the success of his B2B service, his expansion into the university education market, the development and service of multi-subject content, and his future plans.
"Close the 1% education gap"
“About 1%.”
I asked him directly how much of the actual educational gap had been reduced over eight years of service operation. CEO Kwon responded as follows:
It's difficult to accurately measure how much the educational gap has actually been closed. However, the symbolic figure of "1%" encapsulates everything Freewheelin has done to revolutionize education. Education holds special significance in Korea, as educational opportunity is enshrined in the Korean Constitution.
Even before founding Freewheelin, CEO Kwon had been active in "Our School," an alternative school for North Korean defector youth, and the educational NGO "HoE (Hope is Education)" because he wanted to address educational inequality. However, he witnessed the reality of a uniform education system where each student's pace and level of learning were ignored, with all children forced to learn the same content at the same pace.
"I was deeply saddened by the reality that if a student missed a first-year middle school class, they wouldn't be able to keep up with the second-year classes. To solve this problem, I believed teachers needed to understand each student's individual circumstances and provide personalized instruction."
CEO Kwon believed that integrating technology into education could solve these problems, so he founded Freewheelin and launched the math education platform 'mathflat'.
Mathflat offers a vast library of 850,000 questions, links to over 3,900 commercially available workbooks, complete sets of questions from the CSAT and mock exams, and even conceptual resources. Based on this, teachers can easily create customized textbooks and worksheets by selecting the desired unit and difficulty level. Furthermore, integration with the student app allows students' answers to be automatically graded, significantly reducing grading time. Furthermore, mathflat comprehensively analyzes student problem-solving data to identify individual weaknesses and recommend personalized problems and learning materials tailored to those areas.
Mathflat is used by 9,000 educational institutions nationwide, with a cumulative customer base exceeding 2.7 million. Its success in public education is particularly notable. Over 600,000 students are using "Schoolflat," a school-specific solution, at 2,544 schools under 17 provincial and metropolitan offices of education nationwide.
"More than 20% of teachers are using mathflat to teach, especially in areas with relatively limited educational opportunities."
The fact that Mathflat is being used more in rural areas with less educational facilities than Seoul demonstrates its contribution to bridging the education gap. Even closing the education gap by just 1% would give more children access to more opportunities.
Considering market expansion
"I thought I was doing well, but at the same time, I started to worry. I realized the academy market wasn't infinitely large. I didn't start my business with this goal in mind. That's why I was worried."
There are three main ways for startups to overcome the barriers to growth: expanding their market share in existing markets based on a proven business model, expanding into new markets like the global market, or launching entirely new services.
The first option proved unrealistic. Having already secured a significant market share in the private math tutoring market, further growth potential was limited. The second option, global expansion, was also challenging. Beyond simply translating math problems, it required localization tailored to each country's curriculum and cultural characteristics, a process that required significant time and resources. The third option, expanding beyond math, also presented significant practical constraints. Producing 100,000 high-quality problems would have required two years of development and a budget of 1 billion won.
Seizing a chance opportunity… Expanding services to college students
One day in 2021, as my worries deepened, an opportunity arrived from an unexpected source. Konkuk University contacted me, asking if Mathflat could be applied to college students, as many of their freshmen lacked basic math skills, making it difficult for them to keep up with their major classes. They were even arguing that high school math needed to be re-taught.
Freewheelin, which had previously focused on its B2B business by developing math content for elementary, middle, and high school teachers, faced many challenges. Was expanding into services targeting college students truly the right choice? Several factors, including a shift in the company's identity and the time and cost associated with transitioning from its existing K-12 content to university content, presented obstacles.
However, Konkuk University persistently persuaded us to collaborate, and Freewheelin saw this as a great opportunity to expand its services, leading to the launch of a new project. After three years of research and development, "Pulley Campus" was launched in 2024. Pulley Campus is a customized math learning platform for incoming college freshmen. It's designed to accurately assess each student's math level through diagnostic assessments and then focus on areas where they need to focus.
The results were remarkable. In a survey conducted by Konkuk University, 86% of students found the program helpful, and 90% rated it as helpful before taking their major courses. Comparing the first and second tests, students also saw an average improvement of more than 20 points.
Universities have recently been expanding the "no-major" program. This program allows freshmen to enter without a specific major and explore various fields for one to two years before deciding on a major. The number of students enrolled has surged from 9,000 last year to 38,000 this year. Participating universities have also expanded from 15 to 73, establishing it as a new trend in higher education. Students enrolled in this program are required to have different math skills depending on their desired major. Pulley Campus analyzes students' high school coursework and desired major to provide customized assessments and learning programs. This systematically cultivates the academic skills necessary for successful entry into their desired departments.
Pulley Campus is currently operating and planned to be introduced as an entrance test and basic academic ability diagnostic service at 80 universities, and is continuing to expand to all 332 universities.
With this, Freewheelin has expanded its scope from elementary, middle, and high schools to universities, driving educational innovation for both teachers and students.
Developing content for 30 subjects… Emergence as a comprehensive educational content company.
"While math still requires a lot of human intervention, language arts are fully achievable with AI. Everything from writing listening scripts to recording voices can be automatically generated."
The time and cost burden of developing content for subjects other than math has been significantly reduced thanks to recent advances in AI technology. This has reduced the time and cost of content development for language areas like English, TOEIC, Japanese, and Korean literacy. Furthermore, the significant automation of translation and localization processes has significantly lowered the barriers to entry for global expansion. Freewheelin has developed 30 subjects beyond language, including statistics and chemistry, enabling it to truly become a comprehensive education platform.
Building on this technological foundation, Freewheelin has built an integrated platform called "Pulley AI." Pulley AI leverages AI-based automatic content generation technology and over a billion learning big data points to precisely analyze students' weaknesses and recommend optimal, personalized learning courses. This platform consists of "Pulley School," targeting elementary, middle, and high schools, and "Pulley Campus," targeting universities. Through data-driven analysis, it focuses on reducing learning gaps and maximizing individual student potential.
Freewheelin aims to become a "digital Pearson" that covers the entire educational curriculum, from elementary, middle, and high school textbooks to university textbooks, based on its content creation capabilities and AI automation technology.
“Educational enterprises must be good and excellent organizations.”
CEO Kwon firmly believes that education enterprises should be run by good and outstanding individuals. This philosophy is reflected in Freewheelin's CSV (Creating Shared Value) management approach. To put this philosophy into practice, Freewheelin plans to begin collaborating with an NGO in Uganda next year to provide teaching materials and provide training programs for local teachers.
Freewheelin's organizational model is based on Douglas McGregor's "Theory Y." Based on the premise that people inherently enjoy working, are self-motivated, and strive for creativity, Freewheelin fosters an optimal work environment based on autonomy and responsibility.
This philosophy is well captured in our mission statement, "Freewheelin." "Freewheelin" is a title taken from Bob Dylan's 1963 album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." Like a bicycle that rolls freely through inertia without pedaling, "Freewheelin" embodies our commitment to shaping the future of education by allowing our members to demonstrate their individual excellence in an autonomous work environment.
To close the 10% education gap
I asked again: How much does Freewheelin aim to bridge the education gap in the future?
“Our ultimate goal is 10%.”
Freewheelin has a unique program called "Ask Mr. Kiseong." It's a monthly forum where employees can freely ask CEO Kwon questions. When an employee recently asked, "Please envision Freewheelin in 2040," CEO Kwon responded, "It's about ensuring that children in the most underserved places in the world have access to the best education in the world."
To achieve this ambitious goal, Freewheelin will focus on not only building basic infrastructure such as services, content, textbooks, subjects, and videos, but also securing global capabilities and developing AI technology that complements the role of teachers.
While numerous companies are entering the edtech market, Freewheelin, which has been on the same path for eight years, has demonstrated a solid philosophy, combining a sense of social mission to address educational inequality with practical execution. It will undoubtedly be fascinating to witness their journey as their 2040 vision becomes a reality, with their goal of providing quality education to more people through technology.
I hope that the number 10% is not just a symbolic number, but a number that can actually be realized.
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