Course Hero

Tomas Pueyo joined Course Hero as VP of Growth after building expertise in product development, video games, fintech, and most notably, viral growth and storytelling. His background in analyzing narrative structure—influenced by his filmmaker father—combined with practical experience in startup scaling, made him uniquely positioned to understand how to communicate value at massive scale. He chose edtech specifically because he believed "education is the root of most problems. If you solve education, you solve many other problems."

Course Hero's core insight, articulated by Pueyo, is counterintuitive: "People don't want to pay to learn. People want to pay to graduate." The platform is built on this understanding—students aren't primarily seeking knowledge (which is free online), but credentials that prove they can complete a degree and thus earn higher salaries. Course Hero enables this through a peer-sharing model where students can access study notes, past exams, and get answers to questions from other students. The freemium model allows anyone to participate, whether they have money or not, by sharing their own content to access others' materials. The platform has grown to 20 million registered students, with "many tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of page views every month."

Pueyo's role as VP of Growth involves deep problem identification before solution building—applying the same "problem-insight-solution" narrative structure he advocates in storytelling. By talking extensively with students, the team identified specific jobs to be done: 25% of students have kids or work full-time jobs and need answers on-demand rather than during office hours. They can't attend campus and have no time for traditional study methods. Course Hero solved this specific problem with a Q&A service, demonstrating how understanding the actual customer problem—not assumed problems—drives product-market fit.

Pueyo's viral success came not from Course Hero directly, but from his Medium articles on coronavirus (published March 10, 2020). The first article, "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now," reached 40-50 million views in the first week—an unprecedented success. He credits this to a combination of factors: impeccable timing (published the week Western governments took the virus seriously), perfect audience targeting (business and government leaders who could amplify the message), expert storytelling structure (problem-insight-solution framework), and subtle persuasion techniques. The title was refined from the darker "Like Now People Will Die" to the actionable "Why You Must Act Now." The subtitle specifically called out leaders and community members, subliminally encouraging all readers to share it with those decision-makers. His closing call-to-action—"This is probably the one time in these decades where sharing something might actually save lives"—was carefully deliberated as a "white pattern" (ethical persuasion) rather than a dark pattern, using truth rather than manipulation.

Course Hero continues operating as a major edtech platform serving millions of students. Pueyo's influence expanded far beyond the company—his coronavirus analysis led to conversations with government parliaments, including a one-hour session with European Union members, and endorsements from hundreds of epidemiologists and major intellectual figures including Steven Pinker, Andrew Yang, and Mark Benioff. He positioned himself as an aggregator and curator of scientific information, reading primary research papers to cut through misinformation and provide decision-makers with accurate, actionable insights. His follow-up articles focused on specific government policy measures and the privacy implications of contact tracing, establishing him as a bridge between technical/scientific expertise and public communication.