Today we’d like to introduce you to Swetha Tandri.
Hi Swetha, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
In March 2020, I launched Melodies for Math as a YouTube channel and upload one song explaining a calculus concept (along with accompanying visuals) each week. I also began establishing our presence on Instagram and started reaching out to our followers and asking what they needed help with so I could write custom songs for them. This initiative soon grew to help more than 17 students directly but still the impact wasn’t quite there. I knew we needed a team to scale. After a lot of trial and error, in July 2020, I assembled a team of high school students across the United States and Canada (although most were from my hometown and our target audience is still USA students). We also gained a mentor, Haley Hoffman Smith (who was a Forbes influential speaker), who helped us with our YouTube SEO and growth strategy. We began uploading much better-quality songs to YouTube that started gaining even more traction, but we still could barely pass 500 subscribers.
In April of 2021, I read the Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart, which criticized how math was currently taught and asserted that math in itself was creative, and should be taught that way. That resonated with me a lot, as someone who saw math as a creative energy and I was determined to build an audience that could learn math through our songs, and other methods that I was still formulating.
Haley encouraged us to try posting on TikTok to build that audience, which I started in June 2021. Through consistent posting and providing valuable content (I repurposed our YouTube videos and put my own spin on trends to fit my niche), I grew our TikTok to 66K followers to date and 2.26K subscribers on YouTube. Now that we had a huge following, I decided to launch an online community where I can help students one on one with a “creative” teaching style. Because of TikTok, our online community also grew to 950+ members. We host near-daily office hours and are launching a tutoring campaign around our unique 5 step method to ace any math test, which is based on the fundamental idea that math is a game (inspired by the Super Mario Effect Ted Talk by Mark Rober). I am also coding math games based on our songs which involve a lot of visual elements, further connecting math, discovery, and creativity, all while continually updating our database of math songs.
We started off as strictly a YouTube channel showing Melodies for Math, and now we are actively helping students realize the melodies IN math through all our initiatives.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, it has not been a smooth road at all! When I started the Melodies for Math YouTube channel almost 2 years ago, I had NO idea what I was doing or how to even grow a YouTube presence. All I did was upload 1 calculus song every week. M4M was just a side project I was doing all by myself and I had no idea about the nonprofit space, team building, funding, or any of that. I had little to no experience in team-building and was overall very naive, which did affect me mentally in a lot of ways. Our first team cohort only really came together in August 2020, and even then, I had to grow as a leader to move the entire team forward.
The next challenge was growth. I gradually learned how to utilize YouTube SEO but growth was still barely happening. My mentor Haley encouraged me to hop on TikTok and I wanted to apply for awards, but I had this fear of being seen. But in June 2021, I finally decided to try TikTok! It was a little awkward at first, but I committed to posting every day no matter what, and I gradually became more confident. We eventually went viral on July 2021, which brought us to 10K TikTok followers and 1000 YouTube subscribers. In August my team launched our official Discord server which now has almost 1000 members from across the United States. Now we have a large 66K group of followers and I’m happy to help all of them learn math in an engaging way.
Our current challenge is to monetize Melodies for Math while keeping most of our content free for our student audience. I am looking into partnering with other brands that align with our values while launching a monthly membership service (with more 1 on 1 help and attention) for students who want to opt-in.
Throughout my journey, I’ve had many down days and sometimes people told me I couldn’t do it, but I remembered my WHY and kept going.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I consider myself a creative at heart. I aim to make math more relatable, engaging, and creative so that students can use math as a tool to improve their communities and the world around them. Melodies for Math is definitely what I’ve known for, which basically includes all our math songs, our community, and our upcoming curriculum, web app, and math games!
I am most proud of the following and community that we built, and what sets me/my work apart is that Melodies for Math doesn’t just fall into 1 category when I try to classify it. We are a content creator brand, a nonprofit, and also generating revenue but not exactly a startup. It just …is, just like me. I was never able to put myself in a category and now I live vicariously through this project.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
I was born in Dallas and basically grew up here! What I like best about the city is the fact that it has Dallas Hybrid Prep, the first truly hybrid school ever made. I also love the Giant Eyeball landmark.
I don’t know what I like least!
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://www.melodiesformath.org
- Instagram: instagram.com/melodiesformath
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxAmqqOdFQKGlzPcMRH1NAg
- Other: https://www.patreon.com/melodiesformath?fan_landing=true
Image Credits
Swetha Tandri
