Aksum Math didn't come out of an office. It came out of our basement. I write software for a living, and my two sons are in 7th and 8th grade. Between the three of us, we've used a lot of math apps, and we were tired of the same things about them.

My sons were tired of the annoying parts. The ads. The "watch a video to keep going." Logging in every single time. The app nagging them or freezing up the second the Wi-Fi got flaky. I was tired of the parent parts. Paying every month for something that should just work, and knowing some company was quietly collecting data on my kids the whole time. One night I said, half joking, "we could just build the one we actually want." So we did.

The idea behind it is simple. If you buy something, it should be yours. Not rented. Not watched. Not dependent on staying online. Every choice we made in Aksum Math comes back to that.

My sons had real jobs on this

This wasn't a case of the kids cheering from the sidelines. They sat down and used the app the way an actual student would, and they told me, honestly, when something was off: a question that read the wrong way, a hint that didn't really help, a screen that felt clunky to click through. The app writes its own questions, so there was never a way to check every single one, but they went through topic after topic and grade after grade until the practice felt clear and fair.

A lot of how the app looks and moves came straight from their feedback, and they helped put together the intro video you'll see around the site. We keep it small and family-run, right down to answering every message ourselves.

Why "Aksum"?

Aksum was one of the great civilizations of the ancient world, known for scholarship, engineering, and work that lasted. We liked the idea of building math practice the same way: solid, honest, and made with care.