What we need from you (5 November 2026)

We've planned the courses work from your email. Professors and payments come first, then the live classroom, then the first class on 3 February.

Everything we need from you is here, grouped by topic. Most of it already has our suggestion, so it's quick to answer.

How to answer:

• Part 1 has the only questions without an easy default. Please answer those.
• Parts 2 to 4 are our suggestions. "All fine" is a full answer; tell us only where you disagree.
• Part 5 is things only you can arrange.

1. Questions only you can answer

Can students simply sign up for a course, or do they apply and your team picks them? Your course outline has an application form; your email says "students enroll". Our suggestion: they sign up directly, first come, first served, until the places run out. Applications can come later for courses that need them.

For the first school, who pays: the school for all its students, or each parent for their own child? Which school, and roughly how many students?

Are the dates right? Sign-ups open 6 January. Classes are on four Wednesdays: 3, 10, 17 and 24 February. There are two groups of 30 students. Our suggestion: after school, 5 pm Eastern for the first group and 6 pm for the second.

When a student finishes high school, what does their account become? Today nothing changes; it stays a student account. Our suggestion: it stays, marked "graduated". When they start college they can switch to a mentor account, with the same checks as any new mentor.

Who is the Safety Admin: you or Adarsh? This is the person who sees every safety case and is emailed when a deadline is missed.

The Community Guidelines: will you write them, or shall we draft them for you to edit?

2. Courses: what we'll do unless you say otherwise

• A school pays only for the students who actually join. It books "up to 30 places", and we send the bill a week before the first class.
• Refunds for parents: full refund before the first class, half before the second, none after.
• 18-year-olds pay for themselves, without a parent.
• A student can't join a live class until a parent has agreed to recording. We remind the parent by email.
• The first course has no small breakout groups; the whole class stays together. Small groups come with the second course.
• A student's followers are only their connections, so strangers can't follow a child. Anyone can follow a professor or a page.
• Pages list Thnkrr courses first. Outside programs, such as a college's summer program, come later.
• Mentors need the Verified badge before they appear in the mentor list.
• The professor and teaching assistants are paid outside the app, under their contracts, for the first course.
• The certificate says "Thnkrr certificate of completion" until the partner university approves adding its name.

3. Running Thnkrr: what we'll do unless you say otherwise

• First school's students: our team sets up the school and invites the person who runs its page. Students join through the school's own join link, a few classes at a time. Everywhere else, Thnkrr stays invite-only.
• A student can become a mentor later, as a deliberate switch when they start college, checked like any new mentor.
• Teachers must sign up with a school email, or be vouched for by the person who runs their school's page. Otherwise they don't get teacher tools.
• A mentor whose college isn't on our list: we add the college when we verify the mentor, so nobody shows as "not confirmed".
• While we look into someone (for example, after "asked a younger student for photos"), they're hidden from suggestions and search, and can't like posts or accept requests.
• Someone who sends one nasty message now and then: three refused messages within a week puts them in front of a moderator. Only our team sees the words.
• A person checks every photo and video before anyone else sees it.
• Videos can be up to 5 minutes long. We can raise this any time.
• A student's full-size original video file is deleted after 30 days, unless it's evidence in an abuse report.
• Who can suspend and who can ban:
  • Only the Child Safety Lead and the Grievance Officer can ban.
  • A moderator can suspend for up to 7 days.
  • The person is always told why, except in child-safety and intimate-image cases.

4. Already built and on our test site: please confirm

• Chats are never deleted by anything a member does, even closing their account. The personal details go, but the chat stays for the other person and the safety team. The lawyer needs to see this, and the Privacy Notice must say it.
• Warnings and removal notices name the post or comment they're about.
• "Ask us to look again" is tied to the decision, so the reviewer knows what it's about.
• A held self-harm post comforts and never scolds.
• A student can block their mentor, which ends the mentorship.
• Like works with one tap; holding it opens the other reactions, as on LinkedIn.
• The safety team's list shows the most serious cases first, then the oldest.
• The Child Safety Lead also sees care referrals, the "this student may be at risk" alerts.
• Teachers can open their own school's students' profiles, never another school's, and the student sees they looked.
• Declined requests:
  • A declined connection request keeps looking "pending" to the sender, so nobody learns they were turned down.
  • A student a mentor declined waits 30 days before asking that mentor again.

5. Things only you can arrange

People:

• Two moderators to check posts every day.
• A Child Safety Lead (is it Vidhi?) and a backup. Is the same person the one who files reports with NCMEC (the US centre for child-abuse reports) and the Indian police?
• A Grievance Officer for India. The law puts their name and contact details on the site.
• A counsellor the reviewers can talk to, and a heads-up to reviewers that they may see distressing material.
• The two teaching assistants. If they're college students, they join as mentors and get the same check and badge.

Accounts and advisers:

• A Stripe account in Thnkrr's name, with the company's bank details. Stripe is the payment company. Parents can't pay until it exists.
• An accountant to confirm we don't need to charge sales tax yet. We believe we don't: most states don't tax live online classes, and our sales are far below the level where a state requires it.
• One conversation with Obsinto covering two things: showing follower counts on under-18 accounts, and letting classmates from different schools connect. We're building both so they can be switched off, so nothing waits on their answer.
• The partner university's approval for its name (Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon) on the course page and certificate.
• The lawyer's review of the Terms, the Privacy Notice and the Community Guidelines. It now also covers courses, recording and payments, and "chats are kept for good".

Child-safety sign-ups (each one lets us catch known abuse images or grooming):

• Registering Thnkrr with NCMEC.
• Applying to the five free lists of known abuse images: PhotoDNA, NCMEC's list, IWF, Project Arachnid and Google CSAI Match.
• The emails to Thorn and Hive, the companies that spot grooming in messages. Mentor chat on the live site waits on this.
• The WebPurify quote, with our conditions: they keep nothing, never train on our images, and sign a data agreement.

The first school's agreement:

• Two named staff members:
  • A parent checker, who confirms a parent's details before we email them.
  • A care contact, who we alert if a student may be at risk.
• Whether the school tells parents about an at-risk alert.
• Paper consent forms, ready for parents who prefer them.