Knewton Brings On Ex-AOLer David Liu As COO

Erick Schonfeld

Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the executive producer of DEMO. He is also a partner at bMuse, a product incubator in New York City. Schonfeld is the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily... → Learn More

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Online learning startup Knewton has a new chief operating officer. David Liu, the former senior VP at AOL who spearheaded its Lifestreaming efforts and is also an angel investor (SimpleGeo, BlockChalk), is joining Knewton as COO and a member of the board of directors.

Knewton is an adaptive learning platform which raised a $12.5 million B round last April from Firstmark, Accel, Bessemer, First Round, and Reid Hoffman. Knewton currently offers online test prep and tutorials for the SAT, LSAT, and GMAT using adaptive learning algorithms which progressively make the questions harder or easier depending on each student’s knowledge and ability.

Liu’s charge is to help turn Knewton into a platform for textbook publishers and schools to create their own adaptive learning tools. Knewton proved itself with its test prep products, but now wants to move into the center of the education market, an approach other education startups like Grockit are also pursuing.

Person: David Liu
Companies: Knewton, Desk, AOL

David Liu is the chief operating officer of Knewton, an online adaptive learning platform company. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of AOL, Inc., overseeing AIM, ICQ, Bebo, Goowy Media and Socialthing products as GM of People Networks and subsquently head of AOL Global Messaging. David and his teams created platforms based on communications and social media delivered through desktop clients, mobile and web products for users worldwide. David was responsible for all aspects of product management, design,...

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Company: Knewton
Website: knewton.com
Launch Date: 2008
Funding: $54M

Knewton is a technology company based in NYC. Their Adaptive Learning Platform customizes standardized educational content to meet the unique needs of each student. Knewton analyzes learning materials based on thousands of data points, concepts, structure, difficulty level, media format and uses sophisticated algorithms to piece together the perfect bundle of content for each student. The more students who use the platform, the more accurate it becomes. It’s similar to Pandora’s music recommendations or Google’s search results. Last year Knewton...

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