Rapunzl is a financial literacy education company built for middle and high school teachers, schools, and districts.
Students in grades 6–12 get a real-time stock market simulator, a standards-aligned personal finance curriculum, and a free national scholarship competition.
Every student gets a simulated $10,000 portfolio on their own account, trading more than 8,000 real stocks and cryptocurrencies on live pricing streamed from Nasdaq and Coinbase.
Students build real investing skill by practicing with live market conditions instead of a delayed, simulated feed.
The curriculum spans 40+ modules built on the Council for Economic Education's six pillars, and scales from a 3-week unit to a 28-week, year-long course.
Every module is available in English and Spanish, so teachers can run the same course for multilingual classrooms.
Prices stream live from Nasdaq and Coinbase, so a stock that jumps at 11:37am jumps on a student's screen at 11:37am.
Each student has their own account and makes their own trades to develop ownership and mastery around investing concepts.
LIVE
One Integrated Learning Experience
Alongside the simulator, students play econ mini-games like Run the Fed and Rate the Loan and use a FAFSA helper to plan how they'll pay for college.
They can also backtest a position against real market history and use advanced investor research tools, including technical indicators and a portfolio health score.
Simulator and Curriculum in One Platform
The 40+ module curriculum, the live simulator, and the Educator Dashboard all sit in one platform.
Teachers track progress and export grades from the same place their students learn and trade, providing an integrated learning and assessment environment for each classroom.
A Free National Scholarship Competition
Rapunzl's scholarship competition is free for students and has distributed $300,000+ since 2018.
Last season it reached nearly 100,000 students across more than 1,000 schools.
Scholarships are funded by major financial institutions across the US.
Learning by Investing Raises Test Scores
Every Rapunzl module runs on the live simulator, so students use what they just learned on a portfolio of their own.
Assessment scores rise from 34% before the program to 93% after it, compared with a 64% national average.
Pre-program34%
Post-program93%
National avg64%
Who Uses Rapunzl
Rapunzl is used by grades 6–12 teachers, school districts, AP Business teachers, after-school programs, and families.
Brian Curcio and Myles Gage met freshman year of high school in Chicago, in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis. They founded Rapunzl in 2017 and launched its first scholarship competition in 2018.
Rapunzl has a team of fewer than 10 people across engineering, curriculum, and educator success, and both founders stay personally involved with district partners.
Brian Curcio
CEO & Co-Founder
Brian Curcio met Myles Gage during freshman year of high school in Chicago, in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis. He co-founded Rapunzl in 2017 and was later named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 (2024, Education) list. The two bonded over a shared passion for finance, and as CEO Brian leads Rapunzl's mission to open investing education to every student, work that earned both founders their Forbes recognition for promoting financial literacy nationwide.
Myles Gage grew up in Bronzeville on Chicago's South Side and studied finance at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign before co-founding Rapunzl while working as a credit analyst at CIBC. He joined Rapunzl full-time in 2019 after the company raised $3 million in seed funding, and was later named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 (2024, Education) list.
Founders stay personally involved on district accounts
Frequently Asked Questions
Rapunzl is a Chicago-based financial literacy education company that teaches middle and high school students (grades 6–12) personal finance and investing by having them practice it. Schools and districts use Rapunzl to run a standards-aligned personal finance curriculum alongside a real-time stock market simulator, where every student manages their own simulated $10,000 portfolio on live Nasdaq and Coinbase prices.
The platform combines a 40+ module curriculum built on the Council for Economic Education's six personal finance pillars, the stock market simulator, and an Educator Dashboard for tracking progress and exporting grades. Students can also enter Rapunzl's free national scholarship competition, which runs each year from January through late April.
Since 2018, Rapunzl has reached 150,000+ students and awarded $300,000+ in scholarships. Students' assessment scores rise from 34% before the program to 93% after it, compared with a 64% national average.
Rapunzl (spelled without the second "e") is a deliberate nod to the fairy tale of Rapunzel, who was locked away at the top of a tower. The company is not named after the character herself; the reference is to finance, which has long been locked in an Ivory Tower and kept out of reach for most students and families.
Rapunzl exists to open that tower up. Its founders, Brian Curcio and Myles Gage, met as high school freshmen in Chicago during the 2008 financial crisis, and they built Rapunzl so that every student can learn to invest and manage money, not just the ones who grow up around finance.
Rapunzl was founded in 2017 in Chicago, Illinois, by Brian Curcio (CEO & Co-Founder) and Myles Gage (Chief Marketing Officer & Co-Founder). The two met during freshman year of high school in Chicago, in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis, and bonded over a shared passion for finance.
In April 2018, they launched Rapunzl's first scholarship competition in Chicago, which drew 2,653 students from more than 120 high schools and awarded $10,000 in scholarships. Rapunzl has since grown into a national program that has reached 150,000+ students.
Both founders were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 (2024, Education) list for promoting financial literacy nationwide. Rapunzl is also a 2022 Yass Prize Finalist, the winner of the 2022 STOP Award for Transformational Education, and a 2024 Chicago Innovation Award winner.
Yes. Rapunzl's stock market simulator and personal finance curriculum are free for students to use, and Rapunzl's national scholarship competition is free for students to enter. Schools and districts pay for the program through an annual school-year license, with pricing quoted per program.
Rapunzl works with public school districts, charter networks, after-school and summer programs, and corporate and Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) sponsors to bring the program to students.
The free scholarship competition runs every year from January through late April. It has awarded $300,000+ in scholarships since 2018, and its most recent season reached nearly 100,000 students across more than 1,000 schools.
Rapunzl is built for students in grades 6–12, covering both middle school and high school. Teachers use it in personal finance, economics, business, and math classes, and no finance background is required to teach it.
Rapunzl's curriculum scales from a 3-week unit to a 28-week, year-long course, so it works as a short middle school introduction to saving and investing or as a full high school personal finance course that meets a state graduation requirement. Every module is available in English and Spanish.
Beyond the classroom, teachers use Rapunzl to prepare students for the AP Business with Personal Finance course, and after-school programs, summer programs, and families use it to give students hands-on investing practice.
Yes. Rapunzl's personal finance curriculum is built on the Council for Economic Education's six national personal finance pillars: Earning Income, Saving, Spending, Investing, Managing Credit, and Managing Risk.
For state requirements, Rapunzl publishes state-by-state personal finance standards pages that explain what each state requires and how Rapunzl's curriculum maps to it, which helps districts plan for a state personal finance graduation requirement.
Inside the platform, Rapunzl's Educator Dashboard exports grades along with a standards crosswalk for each lesson, so teachers and administrators can document exactly which standards a class has covered.
The SIFMA Foundation's Stock Market Game still introduces many students to investing, and Rapunzl's founders played it together in high school. Rapunzl differs in four ways: live market data, individual student accounts, a realistic portfolio size, and a full curriculum built around the simulator.
Rapunzl streams live pricing from Nasdaq and Coinbase, while the Stock Market Game runs on roughly 15–20-minute delayed data. Every Rapunzl student trades on their own account, choosing from more than 8,000 real stocks and cryptocurrencies, instead of sharing a team login.
Rapunzl students start with a simulated $10,000, close to what a first-time investor could actually put to work, rather than a $100,000 account. Rapunzl also pairs the simulator with a 40+ module personal finance curriculum and an Educator Dashboard in one platform, so teachers aren't stitching separate tools together.
A school or district gets started with Rapunzl in five steps: book a demo, sign an annual school-year license, set up classes, complete teacher training, and launch. Students are typically trading within one week of signing.
Teachers get hands-on training and ongoing professional development, plus minute-by-minute pacing guides and a library of over 150 lesson plans.
Every school gets a dedicated point of contact on Rapunzl's educator-success team, reachable by email, scheduled call, or in-app chat, with replies within a few hours during school hours. Rapunzl's founders stay personally involved on district accounts. To begin, book a demo or email hello@rapunzl.com.
Key Facts About Rapunzl
Rapunzl company facts
Company Name
Rapunzl (Rapunzl Investments, LLC)
Type
Financial literacy education company (edtech: curriculum + real-time simulator)
Founded
2017, Chicago, Illinois (first school program and scholarship competition: 2018)
