This teen-founded Victoria tutoring company is helping students qualify for international math competitions

Most ideas born from whispers in the back of an English class don’t amount to much—then again, those (at least the ones we were a part of) are related to starting a band or the next school dance theme. And while Ethan Curtis and Dominic Ely, two students at St. Michaels University School (a high school, not a university, in Victoria), were likely not doing whatever they were supposed to be doing in English, they did have an academic focus: math.

Curtis, now 17, had competed in many school math competitions. “I wanted to leverage my skills and maybe make a little bit of money on the side through tutoring,” he explains. He centred his tutoring around American Mathematics Competitions (AMCs), a series of esteemed math competitions that are based in America but host kindergarten to grade 12 students from over 30 countries. As Curtis’s client list grew, he and Ely (16, with a knack for marketing) decided to make the business official, and AMC Academy officially launched. “We bounced ideas back and forth—how to make a website, how to market the whole thing—so we could actually grow it and scale it from a general tutoring sort of side hustle to an actual education platform,” says Curtis.

They officially launched less than a year ago, in May 2024, but the founders have added an impressive list of staff to their online tutoring team: one coach, for example, is an MIT student majoring in math and computer science who earned a perfect score on the AIME (American Invitational Mathematics Examination) and a silver medal on USAMO (United States of America Mathematical Olympiad). They report that their individual and group programs have impacted over 30 students so far.

While most of the education is math-focused, the company also prioritizes preparing students for the testing environment and the anxieties that come with it. The founders say that coaches evaluate how students perform under pressure and guide them through strategies they can use to reduce stress.

The duo credits Jaden Berger-North, AMC’s chief technical officer (17, and also a student at St. Michaels University School) for the company’s tech growth and incorporation of AI. AMC Academy uses AI to book sessions, set up schedules and other administrative tasks, and also to help students if they have questions about their homework. Curtis explains that an AI assistant is fed the same problems as the students, so students can refer to the AI as a first source for support (“There’s a margin for error, obviously, so the coach is there to clarify if needed”).

Students of AMC Academy range from 4^th to 12^th grade, and the coaches range from late high school to early university students. The founders see their age as a strength (you have to admit, most adults would probably have been a better math tutor in grade 11 than they’d be now). “We understand how students typically learn the concepts,” says Curtis, “and we are able to incorporate our experience as students into our curriculum design.”

Barely ten months in, AMC Academy’s founders are dreaming big about scaling up sustainably. “We’d like to expand from math tutoring to offering curriculum, expanded AP class tutoring, SAT tutoring, research programs… we can see expanding into an education resource similar to Khan Academy,” says Curtis. Now that’s exponential growth.