After selling Anchor to Spotify, Co-Founders Nir Zicherman and Michael Mignano have introduced their new venture, Oboe, an AI-powered app designed to create lightweight and personalized learning courses. Inspired by the Japanese root word for “to learn,” Oboe enables users to generate courses on nearly any subject by entering a simple prompt.
“The real magic here comes from an internal architecture that we’ve built that I would describe as a complex, multi-agent architecture that we built from scratch, each part of which is orchestrated to run in parallel as we generate a course,” said Zicherman, who noted that high-quality courses are generated “within seconds.” Oboe provides structured lessons without back-and-forth conversation, offering formats like lecture-style audio or podcast-style discussions for on-the-go learners.
Oboe’s team of five full-time members is supported by Mignano, who remains a partner at Lightspeed but sits on the board. At launch, users can consume courses for free, create up to five per month, or opt for paid tiers, Oboe Plus at $15 for 30 courses and Oboe Pro at $40 for 100. The platform, initially available on web and mobile web, will soon expand to iOS and Android.
Backed by a $4 million seed round led by Eniac Ventures and supported by investors including Haystack, Factorial Capital, Homebrew, Tim Ferriss, and Matt Lieber, Oboe aims to make learning both accessible and engaging. “We’re very excited to build a platform that is intended to be the one-stop shop to serve that intrinsic thirst for knowledge that exists in every person,” Zicherman stated.
