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The partners spent more than a year examining available software programs, looking for a way to help students struggling in school.

"We went 19 months without a paycheck," said Piconi, who quit his job as chief operating officer for CommNav Inc. in Harrisburg to launch his search. Mueller had worked locally for the Ben Franklin Technology Center, now known as Innovation Works, and then joined ITU Ventures, a venture capital firm in California. He also had finished his MBA at Carnegie Mellon University.

Their search resulted in Apangea Inc., a company they started in April 2002 in Indiana County, which now has satellite offices in Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and, soon, Boston.

The company offers school districts what it calls "hybrid tutoring," through the use of software originally developed by the U.S. Air Force to train the "modern warrior." It uses artificial intelligence to pinpoint schoolchildren's learning problems and allows a human tutor to step in if the program cannot fully handle the situation. Some 30,000 children were part of the Air Force project that developed the program.

Apangea's software had a presence in 23 school districts during the last school year and Piconi estimates that by the end of next month, the system will be up and running in 30 to 40 districts, including a number of school systems in the Washington area.

"Through the end of this calendar year, we should have $300,000 in booked revenues," Mueller said. "By the end of 2005, revenues will be in the $2 million area."

The Apangea software combines words, sound, whiz-bang, attention-holding graphics and bright colors with the ability to assess and pinpoint where a student's learning problem is.

The Apangea system also cuts the cost of tutoring significantly, to roughly $5 to $7 per hour from the standard $40 and up per hour.

With help from supporters like Indiana County Chamber of Commerce President Dana Henry, the company established its headquarters in a former Robertshaw Controls building, which is now home to Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Small Business Incubator.

Piconi and Mueller knew they had a viable product, but who would take a chance on a couple of guys with no teaching experience? To prove their worth, they began offering hybrid tutoring to children at the Hill House in Pittsburgh's Hill District, and the Parental Stress Center in East Liberty. Success there caught the eye of the Heinz Endowments, Grable Foundation and the Hillman Foundation, which provided the firm some $200,000.

"We leveraged the $200,000 from the foundations and went out into the investment community, to individual investors," Piconi said. A total of roughly $1 million in financial support has been raised.

Still, it took a federal law to move Apangea into education's fast lane. In January 2002, President Bush signed into law the "No Child Left Behind Act," that forced school districts to take a critical look at how their children were performing, and to work to bring up test scores or risk losing federal funding. In Pennsylvania, educators must toe the line under the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, the PSSA.

"The No Child Left Behind Act made us look at supplemental teaching aids," said Dennis Johnson, superintendent of the Cornell School District, in Coraopolis, Allegheny County. "Two years ago, we had a new school board and administration come in, and it was very alarming to us to see how many kids were not proficient at their grade level."

Demonstrations of what Apangea could do worked. The Cornell district within the next few days will begin its third year using the Apangea system.

"We are very pleased with the product. They have grown with us, and they continue to enhance their program as we enhance our tutorial," Johnson said. "Absolutely, I would recommend Apangea."

The next leap for Apangea is "to push a human through the Web." Translation: A roomful of human tutors sitting in Indiana, helping students master their particular math problems. Those tutors would be trained by Apangea personnel. Piconi said they want to remain in Indiana because of the abundance of tutors available because of Indiana University. Potentially, with a Internet-based system, Apangea could reach any student in the country, provided his or her district was Internet-connected.

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