About
Storytime AI started in a classroom — not a boardroom. Two thirds of US fourth-graders can't read at proficiency. We're not interested in another reading app. We're interested in moving that number.
For thirty years, US elementary classrooms taught reading using "balanced literacy" approaches that downplayed systematic phonics. The result is decades of stagnant or declining reading scores. Cognitive science settled this debate years ago — beginning readers must build the brain pathway from print to sound to meaning, and they cannot do that by guessing.
Storytime AI exists because the science is settled and the implementation is not. We build the platform that makes evidence-based instruction the default — for teachers who don't have time to fight the system, parents who can't decode an EdTech vendor pitch, and district leaders who need outcomes inside one budget cycle.
We built Storytime around three commitments: align to what schools already teach (no forklift change to the program your team has trained on), show outcomes you can defend (Skill Tree analytics across all five pillars; ORF scoring inside the platform; placement assessment in 8-12 minutes), and make the experience kids actually want to open (10+ literacy mini-games, a unified K-2 game shell, AI-illustrated decodable books that star characters who look like the kids reading them).
Spoken language is biological; written language is technology. Children must be explicitly and systematically taught how speech sounds map to print. Programs that pretend otherwise produce decades of stagnant literacy outcomes.
The myth that the most rigorous programs are the most boring is a self-inflicted wound on the field. We build for both — kids open the app because they want to, and what they do inside is exactly what the research says works.
AI is a multiplier on a teacher's instruction, not a replacement for it. Storytime gives teachers the data they need, the activities they'd assign anyway, and back the time the platform owes them.
The team
Storytime AI is built and written by a small founding team. We sign our names because you should know who's behind the content you're reading — not just "the AI team" or "an editor."
Brian Carlson
Co-founder & CEO
Co-founder and CEO of Storytime AI. Leads the company from Baltimore, building a literacy platform that meets every reader where they are — anchored to the Science of Reading.
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Scott Quinlan
Co-founder & CTO
Co-founder and CTO of Storytime AI. Owns engineering, product infrastructure, and the agentic growth pipeline — from the platform's AI generation engine to the structured-literacy content surface district leaders evaluate.
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Kate Dwyer
Co-founder & CMO
Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Storytime AI. Translates Science-of-Reading research and product capability into language teachers, parents, and district leaders can act on. Based in the Washington DC–Baltimore area.
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