EdTech: Nico Mancuso Of Roshi On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact On Education

Identify a Real Problem to Solve: Identifying and deeply understanding a specific real-world problem is crucial to creating technology that generates genuine social impact. With Roshi, we recognized a significant gap: parents struggled to find relatable and affordable private instructors for their kids, and university students needed flexible, meaningful employment. For instance, early in Roshi’s development, a parent shared that traditional tutors were too formal and disconnected from her child’s experiences. At the same time, a UNCW student-athlete described his difficulty balancing minimum-wage jobs with athletics and academics. These conversations validated our idea and shaped Roshi’s mission.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course, many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. In this particular installment, we are talking to leaders of Education Technology companies, who share how their tech is helping to improve our educational system. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nico Mancuso.

Nico Mancuso is a co-founder of Roshi, LLC, where he oversees the strategic direction of the company and product development. With nearly a decade of experience in the financial services sector, his experience in investments and growing businesses has been instrumental in shaping Roshi’s vision and growth. Nico earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in economics and finance from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

My mom emigrated from Norway to the United States when she was eighteen, and my dad grew up in New York with Italian and Syrian heritage. They both instilled a strong sense of hard work and an openness to taking calculated risks in me and my siblings from an early age.

Growing up in Greensboro, NC, I attended the same school from elementary through high school, creating a close-knit community with classmates and teachers. My graduating class had around 50 students, which allowed us to form lasting bonds across all grade levels. Baseball was a significant part of my childhood. I started playing on the JV team in sixth grade and continued through high school under the mentorship of the same coach, who was also our athletic director. Because of this close relationship, I frequently helped coach younger students, participated in sports camps, and assisted wherever possible.

When I needed extra money in college at UNCW, I leveraged my baseball knowledge to offer private instruction. However, I quickly realized a key problem: I didn’t personally know any parents in my area who were looking for such lessons. To solve this, I started building a personal website and planned to use social media to attract clients. This experience revealed a significant gap: Parents struggled to find relatable, qualified instructors, while university students like myself needed flexible income opportunities that utilized their expertise.

This realization inspired my co-founder Austin and me to create Roshi, a platform connecting university students with their local communities to provide personalized instruction and mentorship in academics, sports, music, and arts. Teaching a skill — whether in sports or academics — forces you to truly understand and master the subject. If you can explain something simply and clearly, it shows you’ve truly grasped it. If not, it highlights the areas needing improvement. This clarity and the rewarding gratitude from students are the aspects of teaching I continue to love the most, and they remain at the heart of Roshi’s mission.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

This question brings me back to Roshi’s early days when everything felt like an adventure filled with uncertainty. The journey of transforming Roshi from an initial idea into an actual product was particularly memorable. Right after college, Austin and I took the first step by putting our concept into a detailed presentation, filled more with passion and vision than concrete experience. We were excited yet unsure exactly how to bring our vision to life. We took that presentation to various athletic directors at North Carolina universities, not knowing what to expect. Here we were, a couple of twenty-three-year-olds sharing an idea we had as college friends in a formal setting, which was new to us. To our surprise, the athletic directors we met with absolutely loved the idea. Those early conversations about Roshi sparked our enthusiasm to bring the product to life.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’m deeply grateful to the many people who have supported Roshi from the beginning. However, the person who stands out most significantly is my co-founder, Austin Bates. Bates — as everyone calls him — was my college roommate, and we quickly became close friends. Together, we spent many late nights discussing our aspirations, dreams and plans to create something truly meaningful.

Bates has always had an exceptional ability to connect with people, driven largely by his genuine curiosity about others. As roommates and close friends, I witnessed firsthand how people naturally gravitated toward him due to his authentic interest in their lives and stories. I’ve greatly admired this skill and learned how to foster meaningful relationships.

Our combined curiosity and commitment to understanding the business, our product, and the needs of our user base have shaped Roshi into what it is today. Bates’s talent for building connections, coupled with our shared vision and genuine interest in improving people’s lives, is a core reason why we believe Roshi has the potential to make such a positive impact.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

One of my favorite quotes comes from Albert Einstein, who said:

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

Curiosity has always been my greatest motivator and guide. The curiosity to create Roshi led me to ask questions about how communities connect, how families engage, and how we can enrich lives by improving communication. This persistent curiosity — asking questions, exploring ideas, and genuinely wanting to understand others — has shaped Roshi’s journey and my own personal growth. Ultimately, Einstein’s quote reminds me, and hopefully others, that great things happen not necessarily because we have special talents but because we dare to take that first step into the unknown.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. Resilience has been critical throughout the journey of launching and scaling Roshi. Any business-to-consumer product takes a lot of time and effort to get off the ground. Potential users need to hear and see the product multiple times before taking the initiative to try it out. This slower process can be challenging at times. Ultimately, this resilience paid off, resulting in steady growth and positive community engagement.
2. Embracing vulnerability has been crucial to my success. It ties closely to a recurring theme throughout our discussion — curiosity. Never hesitate to ask questions or challenge the status quo. The phrase “there are no stupid questions” holds tremendous truth. If you’re uncertain about something, openly seek clarity, even if the questions seem basic. When Bates and I began Roshi, neither of us had coding or technical backgrounds; we knew very little about software development. However, our willingness to ask foundational questions — without fear of looking inexperienced — enabled us to learn quickly and assemble a talented engineering team, transforming Roshi from an idea into reality.
3. Empathy has shaped Roshi’s entire approach. Understanding the real, personal challenges parents face when searching for tutors and students seeking flexible work allowed us to create a genuinely impactful solution. Listening closely to our community’s feedback enabled us to build trust and continually enhance user satisfaction.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our educational systems. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?

At Roshi, we address three key challenges within educational systems and communities:

1. Access to Affordable, Relatable, and High-Quality Instruction:
   Parents often struggle to find private instructors who are not only skilled but also relatable to their children. Roshi solves this by exclusively employing university students as instructors, creating mentorship opportunities where young learners genuinely connect and engage with role models they can emulate.
2. Meaningful, Flexible Income Opportunities for University Students:
   University students typically face limited choices for part-time work, frequently restricted to minimum-wage jobs that do not utilize their unique skills or offer scheduling flexibility. Roshi empowers these students by providing an income stream aligned with their academic expertise, passions, and schedules, thereby adding practical experience and professional growth to their academic journey.
3. Enhanced University-Community Engagement:
   Universities often struggle to effectively communicate and engage with their local communities, leading to declining event attendance and weakening ties with prospective students. By licensing our platform directly to universities, Roshi facilitates targeted communication, boosting participation in athletic events, concerts, camps, and other activities. This communication strengthens community connections and fosters increased enrollment interest from local families.

Roshi creates a dynamic, scalable marketplace that bridges critical gaps between parents seeking educational enrichment for their children, university students searching for meaningful part-time opportunities, and universities aiming to strengthen community ties and engagement.

How do you think your technology can address this?

Roshi’s technology provides a practical, user-friendly solution to the problems we’ve outlined by seamlessly connecting families, university students, and universities through a centralized digital platform.

1. Simplified, Trustworthy Matching System:
   Our intuitive interface allows parents to easily find, review, and book qualified university student instructors based on their specific needs, including academic tutoring, sports coaching, music lessons, or arts enrichment. By curating a verified network of relatable instructors, Roshi fosters trust, reduces complexity, and saves parents valuable time.
2. Flexible Scheduling and Secure Payments:
   Roshi streamlines the logistics of private instruction with integrated scheduling tools, enabling students to easily balance teaching with their academic commitments. Additionally, our secure payment system, powered by Stripe, ensures seamless, transparent, and reliable transactions for instructors and parents.
3. University Integration and Engagement:
   Through dedicated licensing agreements, Roshi offers universities a tailored platform that boosts visibility and engagement within local communities. Universities can leverage Roshi’s technology to promote events, camps, and programs directly to families, improving participation and fostering stronger community relationships, which can help drive prospective student interest.

Roshi’s technology directly addresses the barriers each group faces. Families gain easy access to relatable, quality instruction, university students have flexible income opportunities, and universities enhance their community reach, visibility, and impact — all within a single, cohesive platform.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about education?

Education has always been deeply personal for me. Growing up, I experienced firsthand the profound impact that mentorship and relatable role models could have on a young person’s growth, confidence, and motivation. I vividly recall how influential certain mentors — often just slightly older peers — were in my own educational journey, particularly in sports, academics, and personal development. These connections accelerated my learning and inspired lasting confidence and ambition.

Later, while attending UNC Wilmington, my co-founder Austin and I frequently discussed the untapped potential of university communities. We saw highly skilled, passionate students eager to share their knowledge and expertise but limited by inflexible part-time job opportunities. Simultaneously, we observed parents in our community struggling to find engaging, affordable instructors to whom their children could genuinely relate.

Recognizing this disconnect inspired us to create Roshi, a platform designed to leverage the immense talent and enthusiasm present on university campuses and transform them into accessible educational opportunities for younger learners. Our passion for education, combined with our entrepreneurial drive, ultimately led us to develop a tool to meaningfully bridge these two worlds and enrich lives on both sides.

How do you think your technology might change the world?

We believe Roshi has the potential to fundamentally reshape the way communities engage with education, mentorship, and personal growth, making high-quality instruction more accessible and impactful for families everywhere.

First, by empowering university students as mentors and instructors, we create a unique and relatable educational environment that resonates deeply with young learners. This peer-to-peer mentorship model enhances the effectiveness of instruction and inspires students to envision their futures with greater ambition and clarity.

Second, Roshi provides a sustainable economic opportunity for university students, enabling them to leverage their skills meaningfully. This flexibility supports their academic pursuits and personal growth, preparing them as future leaders equipped with practical experience, confidence, and entrepreneurial skills.

Lastly, by partnering directly with universities, Roshi fosters stronger connections between educational institutions and their local communities. We help universities actively engage families, increase attendance at events, and build stronger, more vibrant community ties, thereby positively influencing enrollment and community development over the long term.

In short, Roshi’s technology serves as a catalyst, fostering meaningful human connections that go beyond traditional education. It has the potential to reshape how communities centered around universities collaborate, learn, and grow together.

Keeping the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

While we’re very enthusiastic about Roshi’s positive impact, we’re also mindful of potential challenges or unintended consequences associated with technology platforms, especially in educational contexts.

One concern we consider carefully is the quality and consistency of instruction. There is inherent variability because our instructors are university students rather than seasoned professionals.

Additionally, there’s always the risk of inequity. Some families might have limited financial resources to access personalized instruction, potentially widening existing educational gaps. That’s why we’re committed to ensuring Roshi remains affordable and actively exploring opportunities for community partnerships or scholarship programs to support equitable access.

Finally, as with any digital platform, maintaining privacy and ensuring the safety of young learners is paramount. To safeguard every user’s experience on our platform, we’ve prioritized secure communication channels, careful instructor vetting, and robust safety protocols.

Recognizing these challenges from the outset allows us to manage them proactively, ensuring Roshi’s long-term impact remains positive, inclusive, and beneficial for all stakeholders.

How do you envision the landscape of education evolving over the next decade, and how does your technology fit into that future?

Over the next decade, I see education becoming increasingly personalized, flexible, and community-oriented, moving away from one-size-fits-all models toward solutions tailored to individual needs and aspirations. Traditional boundaries of education — such as fixed schedules, standardized curricula, and limited access to enrichment — will continue to blur, driven by technological innovations and evolving expectations from learners and families.

Roshi aligns directly with this shift by creating highly personalized educational experiences delivered by relatable instructors — university students who serve not just as teachers but as mentors and role models. Our technology taps into the growing demand for individualized, accessible, and deeply engaging education, particularly in extracurricular areas such as arts, sports, music, and academic enrichment.

Additionally, the gig economy and remote learning trends will continue influencing how educational services are delivered. Roshi fits seamlessly into this evolution, offering students flexible work opportunities that leverage their unique talents and providing families with convenient, on-demand access to affordable expertise.

Lastly, educational institutions will increasingly prioritize community integration and engagement to differentiate themselves and attract new students. Roshi positions universities to connect deeply with their local communities, driving attendance at university-hosted events, building community loyalty, and creating pipelines for future student enrollment.

Roshi perfectly aligns with the emerging trends in education: personalized instruction, community integration, flexible work opportunities, and stronger mentorship relationships — all of which will become even more critical in the coming decade.

Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”?

1. Identify a Real Problem to Solve: Identifying and deeply understanding a specific real-world problem is crucial to creating technology that generates genuine social impact. With Roshi, we recognized a significant gap: parents struggled to find relatable and affordable private instructors for their kids, and university students needed flexible, meaningful employment. For instance, early in Roshi’s development, a parent shared that traditional tutors were too formal and disconnected from her child’s experiences. At the same time, a UNCW student-athlete described his difficulty balancing minimum-wage jobs with athletics and academics. These conversations validated our idea and shaped Roshi’s mission.
2. Prioritize Human Connection Over Technology:
   Technology is powerful, but to create a meaningful impact, it must enhance rather than replace genuine human interactions. At Roshi, we made a conscious decision to prioritize human connections through our platform, using technology only to streamline processes like booking and payments. A great example was our early feedback: parents consistently expressed that their children felt more inspired because their instructors were relatable college students — role models rather than distant authorities.
3. Build Trust Through Transparency and Security:
   Safety and trust are paramount in educational tech. To address this proactively, we implemented a robust vetting process, clear review systems, and transparent instructor profiles. This careful attention made parents quickly feel comfortable with the platform and confidently recommend it to other families.
4. Engage Local Communities to Drive Meaningful Adoption:
   Successfully launching technology in education often hinges on genuine community engagement. At UNCW, Roshi’s soft launch included student ambassadors, local workshops, and partnerships with community organizations. One memorable event, a free coaching clinic led by university student-athletes, immediately demonstrated Roshi’s value firsthand, resulting in dozens of immediate sign-ups and spreading organic excitement within the community.
5. Listen, Adapt, and Continuously Improve:
   Effective educational tools evolve through direct feedback from their users. Early in our journey, users mentioned Roshi’s scheduling feature was overly complicated. Instead of resisting feedback, we embraced it, significantly simplifying the scheduling interface. This adjustment immediately increased parent satisfaction and instructor availability, reinforcing our belief that openness to feedback is essential for sustainable success in educational technology.

In the realm of EdTech, there’s often data collection involved. How do you ensure the ethical handling of user data, especially when it concerns students?

Ensuring the ethical handling of user data, particularly when involving students and families, is one of our top priorities at Roshi. We approach data privacy with transparency, clarity, and rigorous security standards.

We leverage secure, encrypted platforms and trusted third-party providers, such as Stripe for payment processing, to minimize risks and safeguard sensitive information. Our platform design follows industry-leading security standards.

We intentionally collect only the data necessary for service delivery, such as scheduling sessions, verifying identities, and facilitating communication. We avoid collecting unnecessary or overly personal information. This approach aligns with best practices and demonstrates our respect for users’ privacy, building trust and confidence within our community.

Data ethics is not an afterthought but a core responsibility. It’s integral to our mission of creating a positive, safe, and impactful educational experience for every platform user.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

I truly believe that the most rewarding thing we can do — especially as young people — is to use our talents and opportunities to create positive change. When we built Roshi, the driving force was always about impact: connecting communities, empowering students, and inspiring young learners. Seeing firsthand how technology can meaningfully improve people’s lives made me realize that true innovation is less about what you build and more about how it affects people’s lives for the better.

If you’re considering starting something, focus on the human impact first. The most fulfilling outcomes are solutions that genuinely help others and address real-world problems. By placing impact at the heart of your mission, your work will be more fulfilling and inspire others to follow suit, creating a ripple effect that can truly change the world.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them.

Absolutely. I would genuinely love to sit down with Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy. Sal has profoundly impacted the education sector by making high-quality instruction accessible to millions around the world, completely transforming the way we think about personalized education and digital learning.

His commitment to breaking down educational barriers through technology, paired with his humble, authentic approach to entrepreneurship and innovation, has always been deeply inspiring to me. At Roshi, we strive to similarly create accessible, engaging educational opportunities, and I know firsthand how challenging yet rewarding this journey can be.

Having the opportunity to learn directly from Sal about his experiences, insights on scaling educational impact, and how he’s navigated challenges along the way would be incredibly valuable. And perhaps most importantly, I would thank him for his pioneering role in inspiring educators and entrepreneurs — including myself — to focus their efforts on meaningful social impact through education.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Visit roshico.com or the Apple store to download the Roshi app and follow us on Instagram @roshi_company.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.