LOCKIN started not in a boardroom, but in a dorm hallway — watching someone brilliant and capable drown in a system that wasn't designed for their brain.
Our co-founder Alex had a younger sibling — a Division I football player with a 4.1 high school GPA and an ADHD diagnosis. In college, everything changed.
The campus offered generic productivity tools. Study hall hours. Generic planners. An accommodations form that took 6 weeks to process. His professors were understanding but busy. His athletic schedule made office hours impossible most weeks.
By the end of his sophomore year, he was on academic probation. Not because he wasn't smart enough. Not because he wasn't trying. But because the systems around him assumed a brain that could hold deadlines in working memory, initiate tasks without structure, and feel urgency for things that were weeks away.
His teammates who had dedicated academic support coordinators — people who checked in daily, built their schedules, and caught problems early — were thriving. He had a Canvas login and hope.
“What if we could give every ADHD student the same support system that Power 4 athletes get — at a price that doesn't require an athletic scholarship?”
— Alex, Co-founder
That question became LOCKIN. Not a planner app. Not another to-do list with a purple color scheme. An actual operating system for academic life — one that was designed from the ground up for how ADHD brains actually work.
We spent 18 months interviewing students, parents, academic advisors, and disability services professionals before writing a single line of code. We partnered with licensed psychologists specializing in ADHD and executive function. We ran pilots at three universities before launch.
The result is an app that doesn't ask students to adapt to it. It adapts to them.
Three values guide every decision we make at LOCKIN.
Shame doesn't motivate ADHD brains. It paralyzes them. Every decision in LOCKIN — from the language the AI coach uses to the way XP never decreases — is designed around removing shame from the equation entirely.
Built for the ADHD brain means built for everyone. LOCKIN is WCAG 2.1 AA compliant, 504-accommodation-aware, and designed to work on the cheapest Android phone with no internet connection.
We don't treat ADHD as a bug to work around. We treat it as the operating system we're designing for. That means constraints over options, momentum over perfection, and adaptation over rigidity.
We've lived this problem. Built for it. Remain obsessed with it.
Co-founder & CEO
Former D1 athlete and academic support coordinator. Diagnosed ADHD at 22.
Co-founder & CTO
Built academic support tools for a Fortune 500 before founding LOCKIN. Older sister has ADHD.
Head of Product & Research
Licensed psychologist specializing in ADHD and executive function. Previously at a major university disability services office.
Head of Design
Accessibility-focused designer. Previously led design for an EdTech platform serving 500,000 students.
We're growing — see open roles