Today’s guest is Ben Williams, founder and CEO of Firecracker. Firecracker is, according to its website, “an adaptive learning platform that uses amazing content coupled with spaced repetition to help medical students crush their exams.”

Ben graduated from Harvard College in 2005 with a BA in Biology and Health Policy. From 2006-09 he co-founded and managed Firefly Health, a health-focused social network. And in 2009 he co-founded Firecracker, where he is currently the CEO. Welcome!

What is Firecracker? [1:25]

The easiest way to think about it that for students, it’s an interactive/adaptive question bank. We have a wide variety of questions with a range of difficulty, and we have an intelligent algorithm that figures out what works best for students like you (a kind of smart tutor bot). There’s also content to help you remediate.

For schools, we customize recommendations around the testing schedule and curriculum. So we work with the school to support the curriculum.

We built the platform to be content-agnostic, so we’re now partnering with other programs in the health space, such as Stanford’s anesthesiology program.

If I’m a premed student, what can Firecracker do for me? [6:30]

It’s designed to kill two birds with one stone: to help you master material for classes and learn material you need to prepare for standardized tests.

Say you’re taking organic chem. You can go to the system and identify concepts that are important, and you can prioritize them by how important they are to you (the urgency at that point in the semester). The system will start asking you easy questions, and then more difficult questions over time. The most difficult questions approach board-exam level difficulty (three order questions), so they can get pretty difficult.

Is the system mainly for self-prep and/or a supplement to an MCAT course? [10:55]

We believe it’s for any stage of the process. Most people can use us alongside courses, just like having a tutor.

We just launched a dedicated “test prep” mode, for people who are leading up to a standardized test. That focuses on test style questions and more intensive test prep.

Say a second-year college student signs up and wants help with orgo, and they plan to take the MCAT next year. How would it work? [13:00]

Our algorithm/tutor will recommend the right questions at the right time, so we recommend they follow the recommendations, which are based in memory science – repeatedly doing questions spaced out over time.

The way people use it effectively is consistently, and in short bursts throughout the day. (This is different from the way a lot of people study by cramming!)

We focused a lot on our mobile apps – people use them to study five minutes here and there.

In “test mode” we recommend a progress test every week, to build test taking stamina. It’s important, because many of these tests are very long. This practice and exposure can help you reduce test taking anxiety. Tackling your fear of doing questions is very effective, neurobiologically.

With med schools and residency programs, you have integrations with the schools? [19:40]

Yes, that’s where we have most integration with the curriculum.

What distinguishes Firecracker from other supplemental study aids or learning platforms (