Two seniors replaced a $30,000 pouch problem with an app
Noah Fakheri and Brian Ohebshalom built LockedIn after their Los Angeles school's phone pouches kept getting beaten.
Schools have a phone problem and a standard fix: a magnetic pouch. Students at one Los Angeles school found the standard fix has a standard workaround.
The Learning Counsel reported that Milken Community School spent nearly $30,000 on Yondr pouches for the 2024 school year. Students got around them with magnets, by smashing them open, or by sliding in a dummy device. Replacements cost families $100 each.
Two Milken seniors, Noah Fakheri and Brian Ohebshalom, decided software could do the job. They are friends and business partners since second grade, per the same report. The idea began as an entrepreneurship class assignment at the start of the 2025-26 school year: solve a daily problem. They pitched Head of School Dr. Sarah Shulkind, and the Learning Counsel said she “was finishing our sentences for us” before they got through the introduction.
What LockedIn does
It is an app that locks a student’s phone interface during school hours. According to the Learning Counsel, it alerts administrators if a student tries to use a phone, blocks personal hotspots and Bluetooth devices, and uses a proprietary algorithm to detect dummy devices and other bypass attempts. In a school emergency it unlocks at once, so students can communicate.
A March 31, 2026 press release from the company describes the same design: non-essential apps such as social media and messaging are restricted in set periods, while email, learning platforms and approved tools stay available, with no physical phone collection.
Building it
The founders handled development, strategy and operations themselves and worked through Apple and Google privacy guidelines, the Learning Counsel reported. They said the cost was school time, sleep and weekends, and that their grades suffered. “We joke about being the most hated kids in school,” they told the outlet.
The report says Brian was accepted to USC’s business school but chose to keep going with LockedIn, and that Noah is skipping college to focus on it.
What we could not confirm
The Learning Counsel says LockedIn is deployed in multiple schools across the country, and that Milken reports it ended the pouch buying and repair cycle. The company’s own release gives no school names or counts and says only that schools are exploring the platform. Pricing is not stated in either source, and we found no independent customer account. Treat the deployment claim as the company’s, and check back.
