The AI Education Entrepreneur On The Forbes 30 Under 30 2024 List

Meet Arman Jaffer, the technologist who has earned a spot on the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 2024 list for his innovative work with Brisk Teaching. Launched in 2023, this AI Chrome extension is transforming the way teachers manage their workload. 700,000 educators worldwide already use Brisk Teaching for everything from crafting lesson plans to generating quizzes and even helping with report cards.

Arman’s goal is simple: to help teachers spend less time on administrative tasks and more time engaging with students. “Something that would normally have taken you maybe 20 minutes could be done in two minutes,” Jaffer explained when we sat down recently to discuss his career and his vision for Brisk Teaching.

Jaffer’s journey to Brisk Teaching is as impressive as it is unconventional. Before launching the platform, he worked on cutting-edge projects at Google, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and even in the White House Office of the Chief Technology Officer. However, it was his extensive experience in education technology at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative that laid the foundation for Brisk.

“Teachers didn’t have the capacity to implement modern pedagogies with fidelity,” he shared. Observing teachers struggle to manage a sea of disconnected tools and tabs—often 10 to 20 open at once—Jaffer recognized a deeper issue. “It’s almost like being an operator rather than being in charge,” he noted.

Brisk Teaching was born from the idea of solving this fragmentation. Unlike many edtech solutions that require educators to adopt entirely new systems, Brisk works where teachers are already working—in their browser. The Chrome extension integrates into existing workflows, currently in Google tools such as Docs and Slide, automating repetitive tasks. “Our goal was to meet teachers where they are, instead of adding more work for them to do,” Jaffer explained.

Brisk Teaching offers features designed to make a teacher’s day easier, from content creation to feedback generation. One standout capability is Inspect Writing, a tool that provides a detailed version history of student assignments. Unlike traditional AI plagiarism detectors—which Jaffer acknowledged can be unreliable—Inspect Writing offers transparency by showing how students craft their work over time. “It’s about holding students accountable to their own writing voice and ensuring they engage in productive struggle to improve,” he said. This focus on transparency over enforcement reflects Brisk’s ethos: using AI to support both teachers and students without adding unnecessary friction.

As AI tools gain traction in education, data privacy remains a pressing concern. Jaffer reassured me that the foundation of Brisk Teaching is security. “We are not sending your data to OpenAI or Anthropic,” he emphasized. Instead, Brisk operates its own licensed language model, ensuring that student data remains within a secure and firewalled environment. The platform also achieved GDPR compliance in August 2023, making it suitable for educators in Europe.

Brisk is not limited to just providing teacher tools. The company has recently expanded to include features for students, allowing them to receive AI-driven feedback on assignments. “Teachers don’t want their students waiting a week for feedback,” Jaffer pointed out. With Brisk, students can engage with their assignments in real-time, gaining insights that help them improve immediately.

And there’s more to come. Jaffer shared plans to deepen these capabilities, enabling students to collaborate on Google Docs while receiving real-time support. It’s a logical extension of Brisk’s mission: fostering stronger teacher-student interactions through streamlined workflows.

Investors such as Owl Ventures and Springbank have invested $6.9 million in Jaffer’s San Francisco-based startup, positioning it to revolutionize education technology. Yet Jaffer’s outlook is refreshingly grounded. “I’m an impatient person,” he admitted with a smile. “I wish we had developed more things in the last two years, but I’m incredibly optimistic about the future.”