The price of Mentava’s learn-to-read program ($500/month) has been controversial since the beginning. Let’s talk about it. 

Many children’s apps sell at a low price to a lot of people. But those companies aren’t selling education, they’re selling edutainment. They sell “babysitting without guilt” at a low price point to a large audience. (I’ve begun making explainer videos about their ineffectiveness: https://www.instagram.com/mentavainc/reels/)

On the other hand, Mentava’s goal is to minimize screen time by delivering tangible academic results efficiently and effectively.

This is very different from edutainment apps that keep kids glued to their screens as long as possible, but then justify that with “oh but it’s not that bad because they’re learning a little something.”

I don’t believe it’s possible to build a viable company by selling an educational (not edutainment) product at a low price point to a large audience. There simply isn’t enough demand.

I believe two things about our price:

1. our price is fair, and even cheap, for the value we offer

2. it will allow us to have the greatest impact on the greatest number of children

Neither of these points are intuitive, so allow me to explain.

The value Mentava offers is “teaching a child to read”. Here are the most common ways kids learn to read:

1. A parent. We recommend the book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" to anyone looking for a cheaper alternative to Mentava. Some parents love this process. We also meet parents who say “Yes, I used that book with my first kid. It worked, he learned to read, but we were both miserable and I never want to do it again.”

2. A local public school. I went to public school, as do my kids. Many public schools are great. On the other hand, many districts continue to defend the use of debunked, actively harmful strategies for reading instruction (https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/). And two-thirds of fourth graders in the US cannot read proficiently. 

3. A private school or private tutor. For someone who wants more control over the timing (earlier/faster) and quality of their child’s reading instruction, these are the traditional options. A private school might cost around $2500/month, and daily private tutoring around $1500/month.

We believe Mentava is cheaper, more convenient, and more effective than private school or a private tutor. Our customers agree! (https://www.mentava.com/wall-of-love) And we’re getting better every day.

When you enroll in Mentava, you get personalized guidance (often from me personally) to give your child the best chance of success. We occasionally send physical products that we believe will make our software-based lessons more effective. And we’re continuously testing and improving our software to make it more effective every week. We can’t provide the level of support we want at a lower price point.

We’re already losing tens of thousands of dollars every month to create the best learn-to-read software in the world. And we haven’t spent a dollar on advertising. 100% of what we spend goes toward product development and figuring out how to teach kids more effectively.

Of course, we can’t spend more money than we make forever. At some point, I hope to be making more money than we spend. So what happens then?

Well, we don’t just want to build the best learn-to-read software in the world, we also want to get it in the hands of as many children as possible. Yes, a lower price point would allow us to reach a few more kids, but “a few more kids” isn’t the end goal.

Truly universal access requires using money from people with financial resources to subsidize access for those without financial resources. Sometimes that money flows through intermediaries like charities or the government, but we’re not quite ready to talk about our plans yet. In the meantime, though, we’ve already begun putting our money where our mouth is by granting a limited number of need+merit based scholarships.

People often complain about companies “doing things for the optics”. That’s not how we operate at Mentava. 

Sometimes the hard, unpopular choices are the correct choices for the long-term. We make the choices we believe advance our mission most effectively (reserving the right to change our minds if we learn something new along the way), weather any criticism that comes our way in the short term, and hope that our results will prove us right with time.

You should be able to tell by the end of the 7-day free trial if Mentava will be a good fit for your child. Some families finish our reading curriculum in as little as 4 months, but we believe 12 months is a more reasonable expectation for most families.

Our rule-of-thumb is your kid should be speaking in full English sentences and able to understand left-to-right reading order (distinguish dogfish  from fishdog )Every child develops at their own pace. Most of our students are around age 3.5-5. The earliest we've had kids be successful is around age 2.5, and some might not be ready until they're 7 or later. If your child is already reading sentences and sounding out words with long vowels (like “home”), they are further along than Mentava can support. Instead, we recommend lots of shared reading time, with books like the “You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You” series.

Most mainstream “educational” software would be better classified as “edutainment”. It optimizes for holding children’s attention as they passively consume content for as long as possible. Mentava is designed to be an active learning experience that delivers rigorous learning outcomes. Practice sessions typically last about 15-30 minutes before students are too mentally tired to continue.

We have a phonics-based, direct instruction approach to teaching. Engelmann and Orton-Gillingham have been strong influences on our curriculum. We have unique challenges (the young age of our students means we need to consider the order in which kids acquire different speech sounds) and unique advantages (access to audio, video, and animations creates opportunities for more effective teaching tactics) that have guided the development of our own curriculum.

You can complete the curriculum at each child’s own pace. We typically see committed families complete the program in about 6 months.