Education, exam preparation
How Brainie turned manual course delivery into a self-serve exam prep platform
Study plans, practice questions, payments and tutor support in one product that grows without extra staff
- Self-serveStudy, payment and support run without staff
- ScalesNew courses and students, same team
- 10 monthsFrom first call to launch
What we built
- Student dashboard with exam countdown and progress
- Chapters, timed practice questions and answer review
- Study plan timeline and study tips
- Bookmarks and summary notes
- Ask the Tutor through Intercom
- Stripe payments and Sendgrid email
- Admin panel for questions and quizzes
The situation
Before
Material sent as files. Practice questions marked by hand. Questions answered by email, one at a time. Access and payment tracked by a person.
After
A student signs up, pays, studies and reviews their answers without anyone at Brainie touching it. The tutor answers what needs a tutor.
Brainie is a Swiss company that prepares people for the CFA exams. Before the platform, the course was delivered by hand. Study material went out as files. Practice questions were sent and marked manually. Students asked questions by email and the tutor answered one at a time. Payment and access were tracked by a person.
Every new student added the same amount of work. The tutor spent hours a week on delivery instead of teaching, and adding a second course meant doubling the admin. The business could not grow past what one team could handle by hand.
What we decided to build
The tutor was the bottleneck and the product at the same time. Anything a person had to do per student capped the business at whatever one team could handle by hand. So the build removed the per-student work and kept the tutor on the questions only a tutor can answer.
One product that does the delivery. A student signs up, pays, and works through the course on their own. The tutor’s time goes to the questions only a tutor can answer. The team adds courses and questions through an admin panel, and the platform handles the rest for every student at once.
How it works
Dashboard. The student sees the days left until their exam, their overall score, course progress and the chapters that need more work. The exam date can be rescheduled and the plan adjusts.
Chapters and practice. Each chapter has study material and a timed question session. The student sees their session time, the score per chapter and the best and worst topics, then reviews every answer with the explanation.
Timeline and study tips. A study plan lays out what to cover before the exam, with tips and summary notes as PDFs at each step.
Bookmarks and notes. Questions and pages can be bookmarked and come back in a review list.
Ask the Tutor. A question goes to the tutor through Intercom from inside the course, with the student’s context attached.
Payments and email. Stripe handles subscriptions and access. Sendgrid sends the account, progress and reminder emails.
The admin side is a Laravel Nova panel where the team manages the question bank, publishes new quizzes and sees student activity.
What changed
Delivery no longer depends on a person. A student can start on a Sunday night, pay, study and review their answers without anyone at Brainie touching it. The tutor answers the questions that need a tutor. A new course is a set of questions and material in the admin panel, and the same team runs it.
The platform launched ten months after the first call, built on Laravel and PostgreSQL with a GraphQL API, a React front end and hosting on AWS.
In evaluating the entire project trajectory, the value delivered by 2V for the associated costs was truly remarkable. What stood out most about this company, and particularly under Valerian's leadership, was their ability to consistently balance quality with cost-effectiveness.
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