(CNN)Silicon Valley has always prid

(CNN)Silicon Valley has always prided itself on solving the world's greatest challenges. So it was in that spirit that technology entrepreneur Max Ventilla said he decided to tackle education.A former Google executive who headed "personalization" for the search giant, Ventilla said the light-bulb moment came when he started researching private schools in San Francisco for his preschool-age daughter."We weren't seeing the kind of experiences that we thought would really prepare her for a lifetime of change," he said."The goalpost has moved. It's become much more difficult to do your job as an educator and actually prepare students for the 2030s, '40s and '50s."The end result: a $133 million school startup known as AltSchool. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have made education a centerpiece of their philanthropy. They are among the venture's high-profile investors. //Looking for a new challenge, Ventilla pondered how one might rethink the entire school experience and apply personalization to a pre-K through eighth-grade school. In essence, he's applying what he learned in Silicon Valley and merging that with education. Technology firms have made an art of serving up specialized content based on your preferences. Ever wondered how Netflix always knows what to recommend? AltSchool's teams of 50 engineers do sort of the same for students. The school uses custom software to personalize education for each child. Teachers work with students around that customized curriculum. While AltSchool is a for-profit venture that's building (and investing) heavily in its own brick-and-mortar schools, its long-term business plan is to license out the technology to other schools in the future, including to public schools.