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About

Built by a high schooler
for high schoolers.

StrikeLab started as a personal pricing engine — a way to actually understand what Black-Scholes does, not just stare at it on a textbook page. The platform you’re looking at is the version I wish I’d had a year ago.

IG
Founder

Isaac Gong

HS Freshman · AIME Qualifier · C++/Python/R/SQL

I qualified for AIME in 8th grade and immediately started looking for what came after. The honest answer was: a wall. Adult MOOCs assumed grad-level math. High school finance comps stopped at “pick a stock.” The good stuff was on Bloomberg terminals at hedge funds I couldn’t walk into.

So I built the resource I needed. StrikeLab is a multi-year project — the pricing engine, the curriculum, and a six-week lab that clubs can run. If you’re a student staring at the same wall, this is for you.

Mission

Quant finance shouldn’t require the right zip code.

Every year, thousands of motivated students at non-elite high schools never hear the word “Black-Scholes” until junior year of college — four years after the prep-school kids who learned it from family friends. That gap isn’t about talent. It’s about access. StrikeLab closes it.

Principles

How we build

∂

Build to learn

We don't teach passively. Every concept ends with a function you implement, a test you pass, a curve you can move.

⊕

Open by default

The pricing engine is on GitHub. The curriculum is free forever. Gatekeeping is what we're fighting.

∑

Math is the floor

Built for students who already love AMC / AIME math. We trust you to handle the rigor — and we reward you for it.

Timeline

What we’ve shipped (and what’s next)

✓
Nov 2025
First commit. Black-Scholes engine in Python.
✓
Dec 2025
First lesson written. Pyodide playground prototype.
✓
Jan 2026
Lessons 1–5 published. Soft launch on AoPS forums.
✓
Feb 2026
Lessons 6 (Gamma) and 7 (Vega) added. Greek visualizer ships.
✓
Mar 2026
Public launch. Shared on AoPS and math competition forums.
✓
May 2026
Lessons 8–10: Implied Vol, Option Strategies, Binomial Trees. 10-lesson curriculum complete.
✓
Jun 2026
Weekly coding challenges ship.
✓
Jul 2026
Real per-student leaderboard tracking ships.
✓
Aug 2026
Paper-trading sandbox ships — $100,000 in simulated cash, options priced live with the same Black-Scholes engine from the lessons.
✓
Aug 2026
Rho lesson ships — the fifth Greek. Options Pricing is now an 11-lesson track, 22 lessons total across the curriculum.
✓
Aug 2026
Curriculum rebalanced toward investing: 3 new Investing Fundamentals lessons (bonds, retirement accounts, common mistakes), Quant Investing trimmed to its 3 clearest lessons, and every lesson now opens with a "before this lesson" prereq box. 23 lessons total.
✓
Aug 2026
Interactive payoff diagrams and a clickable binomial tree lattice ship in the Option Strategies and Binomial Trees lessons.
✓
Aug 2026
Certificates of completion and Discord integration ship.
✓
Aug 2026
Classroom rosters ship — teachers create a class in Settings, students join with a code.
✓
Sep 2026
Six-week club lab ships: cohort launch, invite links, a student home, a leader scorecard and private capstones.
✓
Oct 2026
The paper-trading sandbox and the old challenges are retired. Seasons replace them: timed challenges with per-student numbers, server scoring and handle-only leaderboards.
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Nov 30, 2026
Season 1: three weekly challenges, through Dec 20.
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Jan 2027
First Intensive cohort: six weeks, ending in a capstone defended live.
Milestones
AoPS forum launch thread (March 2026)10-lesson curriculum shipped (May 2026)Club pilot program and cohort tools built (Sep 2026)

Want to talk?

Press inquiries, school partnerships, or just want to say hi about the project.