In the cramped, book-lined office of a former high school English teacher in Portland, Oregon, an idea was born from sheer exhaustion. The year was 2008, and the teacher, Justin, had just spent his entire Sunday afternoon hunched over a stack of student essays. Each paper attempted to analyze the green light in The Great Gatsby . Each one, despite his best lectures, was painfully, achingly close to the argument presented in the ubiquitous yellow-and-black study guides from a certain well-known company based in Spokane, Washington.
Today, LitCharts is a quiet giant. It has produced over 1,500 literary guides. Its "How to Write a Literary Analysis" section has been cited in more college syllabi than most textbooks. The company still runs out of a converted warehouse where the coffee is strong and the bookshelves are overflowing. licharts
He looked at the lead executive and said, "No." In the cramped, book-lined office of a former
The real turning point came in 2015. A massive, established textbook publisher offered Justin a seven-figure sum to acquire LitCharts and merge it into their legacy database. The brothers flew to New York for the meeting. The publisher’s executives wore expensive suits and talked about "synergy" and "market penetration." Each one, despite his best lectures, was painfully,
In the conference room, looking out at the Manhattan skyline, Justin thought about his students. He thought about the girl in his third-period class who had cried when she finally understood the ending of A Separate Peace because the "Themes" chart had helped her connect Finny’s fall to her own fear of growing up. He thought about the boy with dyslexia who had never finished a novel until the "Line-by-Line" translation of Beowulf turned Old English into a story he could actually read.