Fundraising Fox

Shepherd

YC W24

Founded 2023 · 5 employees · 6 known investors

Shepherd provides schools with a learning platform that integrates AI-powered study tools, tutoring access, peer collaboration features, and progress tracking to offer students personalized academic support.

Also known as Shepherd Learn · Shepherd Learn Inc · Shepherd: AI study co-pilot

Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (W24)

Shepherd was founded in 2023 by Moyosoreoluwa Orekoya, Marcella Imoisili, and Kehinde Williams.

MOMoyosoreoluwa Orekoya
Moyosoreoluwa Orekoyain𝕏FounderMoyosoreoluwa Orekoya is co-founder of Shepherd, an AI-enabled learning platform that provides personalized study tools and tutoring support for college students while giving institutions oversight and analytics.
MIMarcella Imoisili
Marcella ImoisiliinFounderFounder of Shepherd, a learning platform that integrates AI-powered study tools, tutoring access, and peer collaboration features for schools.
KWKehinde Williams
Kehinde WilliamsinFounderKehinde Williams is co-founder of Shepherd, an AI-enabled learning platform that provides students with personalized study assistance and institutions with academic integrity monitoring tools.

Investors · 6

Funding

SEC filings, press & company announcements

$42M disclosed across 1 of 4 rounds · 2024–2026

Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.

The YC application· Winter 2024 batch

What they told YC

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.
A learning assistant combining AI and human tutors.
What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.
The founders are building an institution-endorsed platform for collaborative, AI-supported learning that aims to preserve academic integrity.

Alumni Q&A

What is the core problem you are solving? Why is this a big problem? What made you decide to work on it?
The founders identify two problems: students juggle separate apps for note-taking, flashcards, quizzes, AI help, tutoring, and reminders, making studying fragmented and costly; and institutions want to adopt AI safely without undermining education. Shepherd offers students education-specific workflows, tutor access, and a learning community, while giving institutions analytics, prompt controls, and tools to monitor academic dishonesty, starting with a market of 19M college students. The founders are former students themselves and spoke with many students about the problem.
What is your long-term vision? If you truly succeed, what will be different about the world?
The founders envision every learner having a personalized learning assistant to help them excel in any subject.

Summarized from the founders' answers on their Y Combinator profile.

Company profile

researched Aug 2026

Shepherd (operating as Shepherd Learn Inc, shepherd.study) offers a consumer and school-facing learning platform that consolidates study workflows into a single application. Its website presents the product as an "end-to-end learning assistant" spanning self-study, expert help and peer/community help, with separate entry points for schools and students. Core features listed include a Notion-style note editor, AI-generated learning assessments, study planning, an AI tutor, access to human tutors, and library resources.

The iOS application, "Shepherd: AI study co-pilot," is published in the App Store's Education category by Shepherd Learn Inc. It supports uploading PowerPoints, PDFs, Word documents, videos, audio files, YouTube links and websites for AI-assisted document chat, summaries, flashcards and quizzes, including interactive comparison across multiple documents. Other described capabilities are an AI note taker that records, transcribes and structures lectures, an AI writing assistant, one-tap conversion of notes into flashcards and quizzes, step-by-step homework and math explanations, and AI-generated personalized study plans with reminders and progress tracking. The app requires iOS 15.1 or later and is also listed as compatible with macOS 12.0+ on Apple silicon and visionOS 1.0+, in English only, at 56.8 MB.

The platform also operates a tutor marketplace; the website invites users to "become a tutor," and paid tiers include access to the tutor marketplace and, at the higher tier, stored videos and transcripts of tutor sessions.

Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.

In the news

Research sources · 8

primary sources listed

8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.

Frequently asked questions

What does Shepherd do?
Shepherd Learn is an all-in-one study platform combining AI study tools, note-taking and a human tutor marketplace.
Who founded Shepherd?
Shepherd was founded by Moyosoreoluwa Orekoya, Marcella Imoisili, Kehinde Williams in 2023.
Who are Shepherd's investors?
Shepherd's investors include Y Combinator, Costanoa Ventures, Era Ventures, Greenlight Re, Intact Ventures, Spark Capital.
How much funding has Shepherd raised?
Shepherd has disclosed $42M raised across 1 of its 4 known rounds.