Presto Education

About us

Rigor from our careers, applied to the first five years.

We spent our careers in quantitative research, trading and AI engineering, where every decision is measured. Presto brings that same discipline to early childhood: a structured curriculum, clear targets and progress you can see.

Who we are

Presto is built by two co-founders. One studied computer science at Harvard, spent eight years as a quantitative trader at Five Rings, was a member of technical staff at Perplexity AI, and placed second in a national Math Olympiad; the other spent ten years as a quantitative researcher at Citadel and Two Sigma, was a member of technical staff at Modal, founded a single-family office, and studied applied mathematics at Princeton and computer science at Columbia.

We built Presto because at ages 0–5, children are often doing activities based on their own or their caregivers’ whims that day. With Presto, every activity maps to specific skills across ten different domains. With quantitative tracking, no area is left behind, and you’ll know when your child is ready to move on.

  • Harvard University
  • Princeton University
  • Columbia University
  • Five Rings
  • Citadel
  • Two Sigma
  • Perplexity
  • Modal
  • National Math Olympiad

Apply as a founding family

What we believe

Why early childhood (0–5) is under-appreciated

The fastest growth in human capability happens before kindergarten. More than 1 million new neural connections are formed every second in the first few years of life1, with synapse density peaking around age 1–22. After age 5, growth significantly slows3.

Right now, even highly-resourced families treat this period as a childcare logistics problem, biding their time until children hit kindergarten. Only then does the extremely prescriptive tiger-parenting begin: supplemental classes, tutoring, test prep. Though it is harder to measure and observe the progress of a child before they can talk, or take a test, the bulk of their learning window lies there.

Expanding the efficient frontier

Traditional education treats time spent on cognition, social skills, and play as competing priorities. We reject this framing. The first-order problem by far is wasted time, spent doing whatever the child or their caregiver feels like doing each day, rather than a diverse rotation of effective activities.

When time is used intentionally, multiple domains can be developed simultaneously, without tiger-parenting type pressure. We aim to push the efficient frontier outward and expand a child’s capacity on all fronts.

The mission

Presto aims to develop children as much as possible during the 0–5 window, when learning compounds fastest and habits are nearly free to form.

We produce a structured curriculum of concrete activities, measurable benchmarks, and outcome distributions, bringing clarity and rigor to an age range that is usually treated as unmeasurable.

  1. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, “Brain Architecture” (developingchild.harvard.edu).
  2. Huttenlocher, P. R. (1979). Synaptic density in human frontal cortex: developmental changes and effects of aging. Brain Research, 163(2), 195–205.
  3. Lenroot, R. K., & Giedd, J. N. (2006). Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 30(6), 718–729. The brain reaches about 90% of adult volume by age 6.