MathFactLab founder Mike Kenny
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Mike Kenny didn’t intend to create an educational web app — he was just looking for a way to help students master their multiplication tables.
In 2013, as a graduate student in the Vermont Mathematics Initiative at the University of Vermont, Kenny was required to design a final project rooted in research. He realized that existing programs that helped students quickly and accurately recall multiplication facts — a skill known as “fact fluency” — were all based on memorization. None of them helped students actually connect the fact to a visual model of what it represents, which research says is best practice.
“When I couldn’t find anything,” Kenny said, “I eventually realized I had to build my own.”
Then a fifth-grade math teacher at the Thomas Fleming School in Essex Junction, Kenny, a 53-year-old Burlington resident, designed hundreds of flashcards that each contained both a multiplication fact and a visual model of that fact. For example, a card with the equation 7 x 8 might show a picture of seven cubes with eight dots on each.
For several years, he used the cards with his students, but paper copies were difficult to manage. When the school district gave students Chromebook laptops in 2016, Kenny realized he could create a digital version of the activity using slides. He began to see rapid results : Students were better able to internalize the facts and recall them quickly and accurately.
Kenny stressed to his students that basic math facts would set a good foundation for the more advanced concepts they’d encounter later on.
“I would tell the kids, ‘You can get through fifth-grade math without fact fluency, but it’s like riding a bike with a rusty chain or flat tire,’” Kenny said. “It’s a grind.”
After honing the slideshow system, Kenny teamed up with a computer programmer in India and launched an app version, MathFactLab, in 2022. It features both multiplication and division fact practice for older elementary students and addition and subtraction for younger ones.
Stymied by a limited marketing budget, Kenny initially began giving away the app for free to generate word-of-mouth buzz. The approach worked. Last year, the company began charging; group accounts for school districts cost $3 per student while individual accounts for families start at $15 a year. The company brought in just under $1 million in revenue last year and is on track to beat that by 40 to 50 percent in 2025, Kenny said. He now employs a team of web developers in India and several customer service representatives. His brother-in-law handles billing. Last year, Kenny resigned as a teacher at Fleming so he could focus on the business.
The app currently has more than 1 million active users — primarily second through fifth graders — from all over the country and world. A good portion of its international subscribers come from Australia and New Zealand, Kenny said.
Nicky Guntulis is a fan closer to home. A colleague of Kenny’s at Fleming who’s taught for 27 years, Guntulis said she recommends MathFactLab to other educators. It provides a variation of visual examples to support kids in learning their math facts, Guntulis said, and its teacher interface allows her to keep track of the progress of each of her students.
At the beginning of the school year, when her fifth graders are returning from summer vacation having forgotten some of their math skills, she said, they use MathFactLab for about 15 minutes a day to “dust off the cobwebs.” Though it doesn’t have the same frenetic video game-like qualities as other online math programs, “kids still love it,” Guntulis said. Essex Westford is one of about a dozen school districts in Vermont that subscribes to the app.
Kenny said he’s constantly refining the program based on teacher feedback. He’s currently developing a new module for middle schoolers that focuses on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing negative numbers.
When prospective customers reach out to learn about the app, Kenny said it’s easy to connect with them because of his experience as an educator.
“I think there’s credibility,” he said, “because I was my own best customer.”
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