How Sal Khan Revolutionized Education With Khan Academy

Aiming for the stars as a non-profit organization — delusional or genius?

Binit Acharya
5 min readFeb 17, 2021
Sal Khan giving a Ted talk.
Photo by Steve Jurvetson licensed under CC BY 2.0 (Cropped from original)

The timeline of the Internet is astonishing. The way things have progressed in the past two decades has brought humanity to a new and exciting place. This is the age of the Internet, and it all starts in 1999.

In 1999, the dot com bubble was reaching its peak. Everyone was busy making startups. Companies like Google were started at around the same time. The Internet was starting to take over the world. But competing with other companies with the same goal was hard work, and startups were not for everyone.

Enter Sal Khan

Sal Khan, a student at MIT, as suggested by his friend started working at a venture capital market startup, NASDAQ after graduating.

It didn’t go that well. In 2000, the startup collapsed, and he had to let some people go. He left the world of startups deciding never to come back again. He describes it as a painful and political experience.

After leaving the world of startups, he went to Harvard Business School, and after completing it, joined a very lucrative career as an investment analyst in a hedge fund. Since he came from a poor family, the money was crucial for him and his…

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Binit Acharya

Walking on the boulevard of life for 18 years and counting...