How Being an Athlete and Student Led Me to Build ScholarAI

For most of high school, I’ve had two things competing for my time: becoming a better athlete and becoming a better student.

I’m constantly trying to improve my grades, study more effectively, train harder, recover better, and still have time to build businesses and work on my own projects.

Eventually, I realized something:

The way I approach athletic training could be applied to school.

That’s where the idea for ScholarAI came from.

The Problem I Kept Having

As a student, one of the hardest parts of school isn’t necessarily understanding the material.

It’s managing everything.

You have assignments in Canvas. You have tests coming up. You have projects that aren’t due for another two weeks. You have practices after school. You have a workout to get done. You have other responsibilities.

And somehow, you’re supposed to know what you should be doing at every moment.

Canvas is good at storing information, but I wanted something that actually helped me decide what to do.

Canvas provides APIs that allow applications to access information such as courses and assignments, including due dates and submission information. (Canvas⁠)

That made me think:

What if I could connect an AI directly to my school information and have it actually help me manage it?

That became ScholarAI.

What Is ScholarAI?

ScholarAI is an AI-powered academic assistant that connects to your Canvas account and turns all of that scattered school information into something much easier to manage.

Instead of just showing you a giant list of assignments, ScholarAI is designed to help answer:

What should I do right now?

It organizes your assignments and academic information and uses AI to help prioritize what matters.

It can consider things like:

• What’s due soon
• How long something might take
• Which assignments are most important
• What could have the biggest impact on your grade
• What you should start early
• What you need to be careful about
• What you should work on today
• What’s coming up later

The goal isn’t just to give you another to-do list.

It’s to give you a plan.

Your School Data + AI

The part that I think makes ScholarAI especially interesting is the connection between the AI and your actual school life.

You can ask the AI questions and use it as a study assistant while it has context about your courses and assignments.

Instead of asking a generic AI:

“Help me study for my chemistry test.”

You could have an AI that understands what chemistry class you’re actually taking, what assignments you have, what’s coming up, and what you’re working on.

That makes the AI much more personalized.

The idea isn’t to replace your teachers or do your work for you.

It’s to give you something closer to a personal academic coach.

I Built the MVP in About Two Weeks

The other part of this project that I’m excited about is how quickly I was able to actually build it.

I had the idea a while ago, but an idea isn’t worth much if you never build it.

So I started building ScholarAI using Base44.

I spent roughly a week or two working on the MVP, connecting the pieces, building the interface, working on the AI features, and figuring out the Canvas integration.

Then I launched it.

It’s now live at:

Schoolarai.org⁠

It’s not some massive finished company.

It’s an MVP.

And that’s intentional.

I would rather have a real product that students can use and give me feedback on than spend another six months building something nobody has seen.

Now I’m Trying to Get Students to Use It

Building the product is only half of the job.

The next question is:

How do I get people to actually use it?

That’s where I’m starting to experiment with UGC marketing.

I’m reaching out to smaller creators who already make content for students and education-related audiences.

My basic offer is $20 + free Pro access, with additional bonuses based on performance.

The tracking is pretty simple.

Creators can generate their own referral links, so I can see how many users they bring to ScholarAI.

I’m also experimenting with view-based milestones for bonus payments.

This gives me a way to test whether small creators can actually drive users without needing to spend thousands of dollars on traditional advertising.

Why I Think This Could Be Useful

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about productivity and athletic training.

In athletics, you don’t just wake up and ask:

“What workout should I randomly do today?”

You have a program.

You know what you’re trying to improve.

You know what needs to happen today.

You know what you’re working toward.

You track your progress.

And you adjust when something isn’t working.

I think school should work more like that.

Instead of having 30 assignments scattered across different classes and trying to mentally figure out which one matters most, you should have something that can look at the entire picture and help you make a decision.

That’s the philosophy behind ScholarAI.

From Student-Athlete to Builder

I don’t think I would have come up with this idea without being both a student and an athlete.

Being an athlete taught me how important systems are.

You don’t become a better jumper by randomly jumping whenever you feel like it.

You have to train consistently.

You have to recover.

You have to track your progress.

You have to figure out your weaknesses.

You have to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

I’ve started applying that same mindset to academics.

And now I’m trying to turn it into a product that other students can use.

ScholarAI is still extremely early.

There is a lot I want to improve.

But that’s also what makes building it exciting.

I went from having an idea in my head to having a real product, real users, and a real opportunity to find out whether students actually want this.

That’s the next part of the experiment.

Build it. Put it in front of people. Listen to them. Improve it. Repeat.

That’s how I’m approaching ScholarAI.