Stanford MBA realizes her vision of a virtual town square
A Jan. 20, 2012 article for Forbes.com profiles Pooja Nath Sankar, the founder and CEO of Piazza, a social networking platform for students and faculty that is rapidly gaining in popularity. Sankar, a Stanford MBA alum, was largely motivated to become an entrepreneur and create the site by her own experiences as a shy female student in India, says the article. Sankar founded Piazza, where users can share knowledge, ask and answer questions and plan projects, with the hope that it would give even shyer students an opportunity to benefit from group discussion and collaboration.
Sankar believes that Piazza is more efficient than threaded discussion groups that students commonly use for questions and answers, and has a growing legion of students and faculty who agree with her, says the article. Founded in 2009, Piazza began 2011 with 4,000 followers. By the beginning of 2012, that number had skyrocketed to 100,000.
Professors have touted the unique benefits of Piazza, as well. An MIT professor describes a situation on the site where his students collectively helped squelch an anonymous student complaint about a take-home exam that interfered with a social event.
"Several other students wrote in to tell the complaining student to stop whining, that there's plenty of time for the exam if they only budget their time. In the past, I've always had to respond myself. With Piazza, the student's peers did it for me."
As the site continues to grow in popularity, Sankar is expanding her vision of Piazza's future. The coming years may include plans for monetization and even hosting other platforms.
