When ChatGPT launched, investors had a simple answer for most AI startups:

"It's just a GPT wrapper."

But what if the biggest winners weren't the model companies?

What if the real opportunity was building products that deeply understood a specific customer, workflow, and industry?

In this episode of Verticals, Luke and Nic sit down with Adeel Khan, Founder and CEO of MagicSchool, one of the fastest-growing AI companies in education.

Adeel wasn't a software founder. He was a teacher, assistant principal, and school leader who saw the potential of generative AI firsthand and decided to build for educators. Just months later, MagicSchool exploded from zero to 1 million users in five months, entirely through organic growth.

Today, the platform is used by educators in nearly every school building in America and partners with districts representing one in five children nationwide.

They discuss:

-Why domain expertise became MagicSchool's biggest advantage

-How a non-technical founder built one of the fastest-growing AI companies

-The controversial decision to give the product away for free

-How they converted massive product usage into enterprise revenue

-Why GPT wrappers were more defensible than many investors believed

And Adeel shares his perspective on the future of education, the opportunities AI is creating for students and teachers, and why there has never been a better time to build software for underserved industries.

If you're building in vertical AI, education, or trying to understand what separates lasting companies from short-lived AI hype, this episode is packed with lessons from one of the category's breakout founders.

🎟️ TICKETS DROPPED. Vertical Software Summit — 5-billion-dollar Vertical AI CEOs confirmed to speak. Snag a ticket before they're gone.

👉 FOLLOW ADEEL KHAN

LINKEDIN ➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/adeelkh/

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👉 FOLLOW NIC POULOS

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NEWSLETTER ➡️ https://insights.euclid.vc/🎬

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Intro

01:30 From school principal to AI founder

05:17 Launching MagicSchool during the ChatGPT moment

08:59 Why domain expertise matters more than ever

14:11 The fundraising challenges of a non-technical founder

20:13 How MagicSchool's product-led growth exploded

23:41 The free-to-paid strategy that unlocked enterprise sales

29:02 Transitioning from order-taking to real sales

34:07 The biggest lesson from scaling to millions of users

36:14 Why GPT wrappers became more valuable, not less

43:01 Competing with legacy education software companies

46:46 Is there still room to build in education AI?

48:05 Why education remains one of the biggest opportunities in software