Education

30 under 30: Amin Sharifi dropped out of SFU to fix public education—now his AI startup is scaling fast

Frustrated by the lack of efficacy tracking in public education funding, Amin Sharifi left university to build Enya Learning, an edtech platform targeting the students outside the middle of the bell curve.

By Mihika Agarwal /

As a tutor with SFU after-school program Friends of Simon—which matches newcomer K-12 students with university-level tutors—Amin Sharifi realized that much of the municipal, federal and provincial funding available to public education institutions was not being used efficiently. “There’s no efficacy tracking to see whether they’re actually helping alleviate problems for newcomer families at a systematic level,” the first-generation immigrant from Iran says. So, he dropped out of his psychology degree at SFU to fill the gap and founded Enya Learning.

 

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The Vancouver-based edtech platform provides personalized adaptive learning software to accelerate literacy gains for learners the education system doesn’t typically optimize for, including newcomers, neurodivergent students and others who fall outside the middle of the bell curve. In the AI age, Sharifi and his co-founders are betting big on the emerging educational philosophy that learning shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all.

Since incorporating Enya Learning in June 2025, Sharifi has scaled the platform from a volunteer-led tutoring initiative into a fast-growing startup with a 15-person team. Enya operates on a hybrid model, licensing its software to schools and districts while offering premium tools to families and running community pilots that both generate revenue and strengthen its AI. The platform now supports at least 250 students in Metro Vancouver, with district pilots planned with Edmonton Catholic Schools—opening access to thousands of new students.

With projected 2026 revenue of $1.2 million, Sharifi plans to expand Enya into the U.S. by September, targeting states with large K-12 populations, while also broadening its platform beyond newcomers to address declining literacy rates among all Canadian students.

AI won’t replace teachers, but it will…

“Augment their experience.”

See the full list of our 2026 30 Under 30 winners here.

Mihika Agarwal

Mihika Agarwal

Mihika is the senior editor at BCBusiness. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, Vox, Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Vogue, Chatelaine, and more.