Request access to A.Team's member-only platform
I'm looking for high-quality work
Request access to build with teammates you like on meaningful, high-paying work.
Select
I'm looking for top tech talent
Request access to work with high-performing teams of tech’s best builders — to build better, faster.
Select

Rapid Prototyping

&

Mobile App

Building the TikTok for textbooks with McGraw Hill

When McGraw Hill learned that students were searching TikTok for studying tools and getting misinformation, the iconic textbook publisher decided to ask a big question: Can we create a studying app for students today?

Mission snapshot

The Team

Team Member Image

Product Manager

Team Member Image

iOS Developer

Team Member Image

iOS Developer

Team Member Image

Product Designer

Team Member Image

React

Node

Swift

Kotlin

AWS

The results

4.8

1000+ App store ratings

28%

Growth in digital billings

30%

Higher retention over competitors

The scope

2

Missions

2+

Years

Active

Status

Prototyping

Mobile app

Improvements

the challenge

Building a digital product to retain a younger audience

For 130 years, McGraw Hill has been the world's most trusted educational publisher, reaching over 20M students globally and generating over $1B in revenue. But in today’s market they needed to find a way to retain a younger audience with digital first experiences.

The vision for the McGraw Hill Sharpen app was to provide a feed of videos and swipeable study tools that mimicked the feel of TikTok with the gamified incentives of Duolingo. But first they needed a prototype to get the board’s approval.

Video streaming embed

Social learning tools

Progress tracking analytics

Adaptive learning algorithms

Micro-learning solutions

Product Image

the a.team solution

Agile product development with a flexible, diverse team

It’s always a challenge for large enterprise companies to spin up a team of diverse builders in a short amount of time. “From the start, A.Team enabled us to prototype and iterate more efficiently. Then ultimately, at the product development stage, they gave us the agility to quickly scale up and down with the resources needed to get to market sooner,” said Justin Singh, Chief Transformation and Strategy Officer at McGraw Hill.

Agile product development

McGraw Hill needed to build fast. “As a team, we wanted a faster, more agile way to undergo product development.”

Workforce flexibility

A.Team offered the ability to scale the team up and down. “What we found with A.Team was their passion to help us grow and their passion to be flexible.”

Diverse Talent

The team included iOS and full-stack developers, product managers, and designers. “We were able to very quickly bring in A.Teamers with diverse backgrounds that enriched our product development.”

“A.Team enabled us to prototype and iterate more efficiently. They gave us the agility to quickly scale up and down with the resources needed to get to market sooner.”

Justin Singh, CTO @ McGraw Hill

“Working with a small senior internal client team allowed us to streamline the decision making process, scale the team when we needed to, and ultimately ship more, faster”

Jared Cocken, A.Teamer

building the team

Integrating a fractional team of domain experts

McGraw Hill brought in A.Team to assemble a small three-person team to build a prototype to test with students and show their board. Based on highly positive initial feedback, McGraw Hill grew the team to eight product builders for the MVP, and then expanded again to an A.Team of 27 builders—spanning software architects, product managers, mobile developers, and growth marketers—blending with the internal team seamlessly. A.Team gave McGraw Hill access to a talent pool that a publishing company wouldn’t otherwise enjoy.

Meet the team

Product Manager & Designer

Jared C.

CPO Level

Enterprise SaaS

UX/UI

Product Strategy

Data Integrations

iOS Developer

Lyndsey S.

Flutter

Node.js

SwiftUI

iOS

jQuery

Objective-C

XML

Full-stack Developer

Nick H.

Node.js

React.js

AWS

Nest.js

MongoDB

Kubernates

Back-end Developer

Edwin I.

PostgreSQL

React.js

AWS

Node

MongoDB

Express.js

Android Developer

Scott S.

Node.js

React.js

AWS

Nest.js

MongoDB

Kubernates

QA Engineer

Imran K.

Web Apps

Figma

Sketch

Creative Cloud

Prototyping

building the product

Rapid prototyping to inform digital transformation

They built a platform that allowed the content team to create, preview and publish 95 courses so their learners could engage with accessible low-latency TikTok-style videos, flashcards and quizzes through a best-in-class mobile UI. Although it started as an MVP, Sharpen was built for high scale—that meant focusing resources on the app’s efficiency and back end for it to handle high traffic.

To get buy-in from the board, Singh delivered a rapid prototype that had been pre-tested with student users. “We told the board, ‘Imagine if you had that when you were in college.’ And then we showed what students were saying about the prototype. All of a sudden the board was like, ‘We get it.”

results

Sharpen was quickly adopted — viewed 412M times

It worked. Sharpen was quickly adopted amongst thousands of students across the country, splashed across the front page of Forbes (Students Viewed This Type of TikTok 412 Million Times—And It's Not Porn), and led McGraw Hill's latest earnings report as it recorded a 28% growth in its digital billings. It now has over 1000+ ratings averaging 4.8 stars, and retention numbers 30% higher than their education app competitors.

With Sharpen, McGraw Hill has shown what true digital transformation looks like for enterprise companies—proving that anything is possible when you have the right team.

4.8

1000+ App store ratings

28%

Growth in digital billings

30%

Higher retention over competitors

Newsroom

Featured in the press