About.

Jack Forbes

I'm a Seattle-based founder focused on Class Companion.

About me

Entrepreneur, nerd, and athletic enthusiast! I'm on a mission to improve learning and teaching with Class Companion.

I love building digital experiences, watching The Office, cheering on SpaceX, and just about every outdoor activity. Especially soccer.

I grew up in Waterloo, Ontario until the age of 10, at which point my family and I moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington. I followed in my father’s footsteps and graduated from Management Engineering at the University of Waterloo. I am now a dual citizen, having spent about half my life in Canada and half in the United States.

My internships at UWaterloo took me to Vancouver and the San Francisco Bay Area. After quite a few renting horror stories, I started Kopa (originally called PadPiper) as my final year Capstone project. After two years as a part-time passion project, I took the leap to go full-time, followed by joining the YC W19 batch. Just one year later, Covid took its toll. A year of trying everything we could to continue working on Kopa full-time, we had to get full-time jobs in order to keep Kopa alive.

This brought me to MasterClass as a growth engineer working on everything from landing page conversion to SEO to retention. I’ve had a unique relationship with education throughout my life. My mother worked in our school department for about 20 years but even though it’s apparently in my blood, I didn’t enjoy academics. I knew I wanted to end at a undergraduate degree. But over the years I’ve come to love learning. I actively try to learn something every day. It’s just the way I was learning in school that I didn’t enjoy.

This growing passion for education led me to co-found Class Companion. We’re on a mission to give teachers superpowers using AI. It turns out the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, after all.

Experience

Co-Founder, Class Companion

Mar 2023 - Present

Class Companion empowers teachers to give instant feedback on written assignments while making high school written assignments fun, engaging, and useful for students.

Tech Lead, Masterclass

Mar 2021 - Feb 2023

Frontend engineer and tech lead for the following growth pods: Virality, retention, SEO, landing page conversion, holiday conversion, growth infrastructure, and innovation.

Co-Founder & CEO, Kopa

Mar 2018 - Aug 2023

Kopa is the marketplace for medium-term housing. Accepted into Y Combinator (W19). Raised $1m. Gathered over 10,000 hosts onto the marketplace. Helped 10,000+ people easily find and rent a home. Processed $5m+ in rent.

Sr. Technical Consultant, Salesforce

Feb 2017 - Mar 2018

Salesforce acquired Sequence in February, 2017. Lead development teams for clients. Blockchain student achievements platform for university. AR mobile app for pharmacy chain. Patient portal for dental company.

Frontend Engineer, Sequence

Jun 2016 - Feb 2017

4-person engineer team at design/dev agency. CRM and marketing game for Chipotle. Sebsite for Opus One

Frontend Engineer, Google

Aug 2015 - Dec 2015

Nest Developers portal for Works With Nest integrations. Built out portal frontend. Increased testing code-coverage from ~20% to ~80%.

UI Software Engineer, Zazzle

Jan 2015 - Apr 2015

Built a database configuration tool. Built translation tool- Won Pi Day (recited 30 digits of Pi from memory)

Software Engineer, Electronic Arts

May 2014 - Aug 2014

Online Fifa Ultimate team (Pulse). Built frontend. Improved code-coverage from ~40% to ~95%. Made it into the credits of FIFA 15 🔥

Project Manager, BC Hydro

Sep 2013 - Dec 2013

Crafted 10-year strategic roadmap for Grid Operations team. Saved the org $25k/year with Pearl scripts and VB Excel macros to automate control room scheduling.

Web Developer, Gumstix

Jan 2013 - May 2013

Increased revenue 17% by creating an application to organize company products, create social network posts/press releases, and view site analytics.