By Jamie Hu
Our department had the pleasure of chatting with Evan McCall, whose AI-powered, personalized tutoring application RazeMath won the New Venture Competition earlier this year. Read his full interview to learn more about him, the origins of his start-up company, his experience in the New Venture Program, and more.
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Q: What is your general background? This can cover your student experience and/or any previous career experience before you joined the New Venture Program.
A: I studied mathematics for two years at UC Santa Cruz, and transferred to UC Santa Barbara in my third year to continue my studies. Outside of school, I worked as a prompt engineer at an AI firm called Outlier, where my responsibilities were enhancing the math capabilities of AI models, deducing why AI models make errors in math problems, and figuring out the best course of action to correct it and prevent repeats.
I’ve also worked multiple internships. I briefly held an internship where I would audit math textbooks and mark them up to create an AI model that was better at writing mathematical proofs. During another internship, I worked under the co-founder of a unicorn tech company on a new startup idea to make AI agents for company executives. We got together at coffee shops once or twice a week, facilitating conversation about how to bring the product forward. All the while, I was learning his best practices on how to grow a multi-billion dollar tech company.
Tell me about RazeMath & your experience in the New Venture Program.
Q: What is RazeMath? Give me your elevator pitch and any additional details.
A: RazeMath is an AI education platform, accessible on a browser at razemath.com, that redefines the way college students learn math. Instead of just giving answers, it breaks problems into clear, step-by-step explanations and generates guiding questions that strengthen intuition and problem-solving skills.
At the same time, RazeMath equips educators with real-time insights into class-wide performance, highlighting where learners struggle and offering actionable recommendations. So RazeMath not only benefits learners by providing personalized, step-by-step breakdowns, but helps universities raise key metrics and improve classroom efficiency.
Q: What is the origin story of RazeMath?
A: Towards the end of my internship with the co-founder of the large tech company, I was motivated to try something of my own and to create a startup. So, in my room, I brainstormed 12 potential startup ideas, all incorporating AI integrations into various industries. I did a deep dive on each of them, hypothesized problems and solutions, and began narrowing down to the few ideas where my domain expertise matched the acuteness of the problem.
I ultimately chose math because the problem-solving tool landscape was fragmented. With my background in improving the math capabilities of AI models, I saw the opportunity to use AI to fundamentally change how students learn math. Watching how ChatGPT reshaped the way students approached their studies, I realized there was room for a more personalized, education-first solution—one built to guide understanding rather than just provide answers.
Q: RazeMath won the New Venture Competition. Congratulations on that amazing achievement! What were the key elements of the competition that you’d say benefited RazeMath the most?
A: I'd say RazeMath—not just the idea of it, but its final format—began about two months before the New Venture Competition started. But it was really through the New Venture Competition that we were pushed towards strong market validation. I think the focal area that set us apart from the other contenders was the depth of that market validation.
We really intentionally hit it home with the amount of interviews that we conducted in person. What that meant is that every other weekend, we were driving up and down the coast of California, going to different universities, and knocking on doors of math departments to figure out what the most pressing needs were on the student level, TA level, instructor level, and university level. That really allowed us to not only deduce what the problems were worth solving to these institutions, but also to form connections with their decision makers.
I'd say it was the New Venture Competition that was a very significant driver of making RazeMath what it is now. It was only through that experience that we were able to make key pivots that would help RazeMath more accurately address real-world problems.
Q: What parts of the competition, be it specific courses, key skills, or advice from mentors, brought you to where you are in your career today?
A: Through the New Venture Competition, I became aware of the TMP 149 (Creating a Market-Tested Business Model) course, taught by Jim Semick. This was a class that I took in parallel with the competition throughout the Winter Quarter. The class followed a similar structure and timeline as the regular New Venture workshops, with an added emphasis on customer discovery and performing interviews. It really pushed us to go even further than we’d originally planned, and to find people to talk to about RazeMath.
A lot of the skills we learned in the competition involved business model development. We loosely followed a document called the Business Model Canvas, which detailed different areas of a successful business model. We looked at each of those under a microscope and enacted several changes in every area.
The roster of mentors for the New Venture Competition was absolutely phenomenal. There were so many successful former executives who were happy to look at these young, aspiring entrepreneurs and give us the wisdom they’d accrued over the years. I talked with a couple of CFOs who taught me about equity structure and how we could create a business model that was sustainable and most aligned with our needs. We also talked to product managers who told us how we should go about building our MVP (Minimum Viable Product), walking us through the bare bones of what our team needed to begin selling in the market.
Q: What would you say was your most impactful, interesting, or memorable experience while in the competition?
A: One of the most impactful memories I have from the competition was working with the program director to refine our pitch deck. In the first six months of the competition, all teams are on equal footing and finishing their ideation and proposed business model. It's all leading up to the New Venture Fair. 20 teams are then selected to go to Corwin Pavilion and set up a booth for their start-up, exhibition-style. The judges walk around and critique all of the different exhibitions before choosing the final six.
So we made this final six. And that last two-week stretch was probably one of the most impactful areas of the whole program for me because it was solely focused on the pitch deck we would show the judges. The 8-minute pitch deck completely covered every area of our business, from our revenue model and market validation, to our problem statement, solutions, and testimonials. Creating this pitch deck was very pivotal for me, since it gave me the skills that I needed to present to real investors. We received excellent coaching and valuable insights on how we can better articulate our business model. We still use the pitch deck we created for the competition!
Q: If you could give any advice to students or budding entrepreneurs who wanted to join the competition, what would you say to them?
A: I would say that what you put into the program is what you get out of it. Not just for winning the program, but also succeeding in that area. The New Venture Program teaches real business skills that will be relevant if you're pursuing a managerial or executive position in a company. If you keep it on the back burner, you'll get good skills, but you won't garner as much information as you would if you really staked your time and belief in the program.
So, that’s what I recommend. It's a great program, and if you're pursuing a career in entrepreneurialism, you should absolutely attend. If you show up with a good attitude every week and you're ready to put the work in, it will be a positive experience.
Q: What do you wish everyone knew about the New Venture Program?
A: I wish that they knew that there was a very solid roster of mentors. I had attended various startup incubator programs and seen the mentors before, and thought that Santa Barbara had a particularly intelligent cast of characters. They were also very accessible; they always felt like an email away. So, that’s what I would tell people: if mentorship is something they're interested in, they should really jump on this opportunity to establish those connections.
Tell me about the future of RazeMath.
Q: Where would you like to see RazeMath going forward, and how are you working toward this vision?
A: I would like to see RazeMath as essential technology in not just university classrooms, but in the institutions themselves. We've seen the education sector develop rapidly with the onset of AI, and we strive to be the focal point of where students and instructors can go. So, becoming a central node in the ecosystem of these universities is where RazeMath is headed. Right now, we're running pilots in 3 universities, and students are regularly completing problems on RazeMath and getting personalized feedback. Through interviews of these users, we've found so many great nuggets that have helped make RazeMath as beneficial as possible. We're also contacting several universities to secure potential adoptions in this next upcoming academic year.
Q: If our readers or departmental shareholders want to know more about RazeMath, where can they start?
A: I would say the best place to contact me and learn more would be my LinkedIn.
Q: Is there anything else that you'd like to tell me about RazeMath?
A: Right now, we’re fundraising to take RazeMath to the next level—building a more sophisticated platform that better supports both students and administrators. Our immediate goal is to bring RazeMath into classrooms at UC Santa Barbara, where it can not only improve how students learn math but also stand as proof that the New Venture Program creates real, scalable businesses. RazeMath was accelerated through the New Venture Competition, so UCSB has been a huge part of our story.
If you’re an administrator, investor, or student curious about how AI is reshaping education, we’d love for you to be part of this journey. You can learn more at razemath.com.