Profiles in Success
Michael Vilardo | Emile Learning
Empowering students with a reflective learning experience
Michael Vilardo is the co-founder, president and COO of Emile Learning. He won the $10,000 Technology Sector Award in the 2020 Big Bang! Business Competition while an MBA student at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
His venture, VHomes, which Vilardo scaled up with guidance from mentors at the Anderson Venture Accelerator, turned vacant and distressed motels and other locations into weekly and monthly rentals for budget-minded travelers and tenants. “It was profitable from Day 1 and won many competitions,” Vilardo says. A year after launching, he sold VHomes to a Bay Area short-term rental company and became a minority owner of that technology platform, now called NomΛd, which pays him monthly revenue.
Vilardo co-founded Emile Learning in August 2020. Since then the startup has announced $5.4M in angel and seed funding and embarked on its next phase: expanding its scope to include a wider spectrum of high school courses and rolling out their official accreditation status, which allows Emile to grant high school credit to students who complete their courses.
Briefly, what is your venture?
Emile Learning—Building the Masterclass of High School Education, where students can earn high school and college credit for engaging with our premium videos and vibrant community. We are bringing the best trends in consumer tech, media and social media to the world of education.
How does your venture make the world a better place?
We are focused on empowering millions of kids domestically and abroad with the opportunity to have the best high school learning experience. Gen Z and Gen Alpha have grown up with lnstagram, Youtube, now TikTok. Their learning should reflect the times and be focused on short-form, premium videography, with top technical tools for preparing them to find fulfillment and monetizable skill sets for the working world.
What was most valuable about participating in the Big Bang?
The continual practice involved pre-pitch competition and then executing in the live events was critical to improving my ability to sell myself and my business ideas. Focusing on delivering concise, persuasive messaging is one of the most important skill sets for an entrepreneur to master quickly—for fundraising, recruiting and daily negotiations.
What are Emile's key milestones?
Emile has raised $5.4M in angel/seed funding, led by Kleiner Perkins and the founders of Cameo, Overtime, WHOOP and Teachable. We are excited to continue to build as fast as possible, as we have 14 full-time employees and many others we work with on a weekly or monthly basis.
What's next for your startup?
By the end of this year, we plan to raise our Series A. Within five years, we aim to have raised at least $500M worth and have a $1 OB+ market cap.
What's your single best piece advice for Aggie Innovators?
Get started ASAP. There is no better way to become an entrepreneur than by doing. Recruiting, fundraising, failing, iterating—these all can be simulated in the classroom or minutely experienced in the professional world, but nothing compares to truly starting a business.
I recommend working on small businesses to start and working towards a venture-backable idea.