Presto didn't start as a product idea. I built it for my own kids.
When we moved from South Africa to New Zealand, the way the school years line up meant my children were placed a year ahead of where they had been. They were suddenly expected to be comfortable with maths that they hadn't yet had enough time to master.
They were struggling to keep up with their classmates, and I could see that some of the problems weren't really about the maths they were being taught that week. They were gaps in the foundations underneath it.
So I built Presto to give them a way to practise those fundamentals every day.
The approach is simple: practise one skill at a time, repeat the things that are still difficult, master each level before moving on, and keep going consistently. I based the structure on an approach to learning that emphasises small steps, repetition and mastery rather than simply moving on because a child has reached the end of a lesson.
My kids have now been using Presto for more than a year. I've watched them catch up with their classmates, improve their maths performance at school and, perhaps most satisfying of all, finally master their multiplication facts.
That experience is why I'm building Presto beyond our family.
There are plenty of reasons a child can fall behind in maths. Sometimes a concept wasn't fully understood. Sometimes a few basic facts never became automatic. Sometimes a child simply needs more practice than there was time for at school.
Whatever the reason, a gap in one fundamental skill can make everything that comes afterwards harder.
I built Presto because I wanted something that could help my own children close those gaps. Now I'd like to make it available to other families who might be facing the same thing.
It's still the same idea: short, focused practice, repeated consistently, with each fundamental mastered before moving on.
It worked for my kids. I'm sharing Presto so it could help yours too.
Allan Thöle, Presto Math
