Y Combinator Of Education Imagine K12 Launches Its 3rd Cohort, Bringing The Digital Revolution To Classrooms Near You
The number of startup accelerators has grown exponentially over the last few years. There are now over 100 of them scattered throughout the U.S. — a fairly dramatic increase from 2007, when there were just about four, according to Y Combinator’s estimates. Today, when it seems that every vertical — mobile, gaming, hardware, etc. — has its own accelerator, education remains somewhat of an outlier.
That’s why, after encouragement from YC founder Paul Graham, former Yahoo and Google execs Tim Brady, Alan Louie and Geoff Ralston created Imagine K12 in 2011 — to provide a network of support for the next generation of young edtech companies. In Mike’s coverage of the accelerator’s launch, he called it the “Y Combinator for education startups.” Given Graham’s early moral support and similarities between the models, the comparison makes a lot of sense. At the same time, given what Y Combinator has become over the last 5 years (and the fact that it now launches 75 startups at a time), it’s an ambitious analogy.
Yet, on Friday, Imagine K12 launched its third cohort of edtech startups at its own Demo Day in Palo Alto, and while it’s still not quite at YC’s level, the accelerator has already come a long way. With each batch, its startups show more promise. [For more on the eleven companies from Imagine K12’s third class, see company descriptions below.]
Following the YC and TechStars model, Imagine K12 set out to find promising young startups, offering to support their early coding sessions and product testing with a little seed capital (ranging between $14K to $20K in exchange for an average of 6 percent equity), work space and coaching on everything from accounting to how to pitch investors. Although the founders weren’t initially sure the model would work for education, they received 100 applications for their first class, and things have grown steadily from there.
To be fair, Imagine K12 continues to be a work in progress, as its ratio of teachers-to-engineers among its founding teams still favors the latter, for example. Nonetheless, since its launch last March, the ed-ccelerator experiment has shown some promising results. Of the 19 companies launched in its first two classes, 13 of them have collectively raised over $10 million from angels and VCs, with products created by Imagine K12 grads now in use in over 300K classrooms, reaching over 4 million students.
All in all, as accelerators become their own industry segment and the space gets more and more crowded, “vertical” accelerators (and even corporate accelerators, which offer some of the same benefits) may win out over those with broader (or more horizontal) approaches to business incubation. Essentially, the more effective an accelerator is in helping startups solve the problems specific to its industry, the more valuable they become.
That’s why Imagine K12 has turned its focus to finding more (and better) opportunities for its founders to connect with the right education customers — and teachers. After all, access to industry contacts, like institutions, districts and administrators, can be tough for young and first-time entrepreneurs (especially the technical among them) to forge on their own.
As the education industry is transformed by web and mobile technology and digital distribution channels, edtech startups are finding they have more latitude in how they sell to their customers. Startups are now able to more effectively (and directly) target teachers, instead of having to deal exclusively with the more painful, traditional purchasing channels, like, ahem, districts.
To give its founders greater access to teachers, Imagine K12 launched an Educator Day, which treats teachers to product demos, and gives the crowd (typically several hundred) an opportunity to interact with startups, offer feedback, ask questions and discover potentially useful tech to use in their classrooms.
On top of that, inspired by the Entrepreneur-In-Residence (EIR) positions offered by many venture capital firms, the accelerator created its own residency program for teachers, allowing startups to leverage the on-site expertise of a real, live practicing teacher. Their “TIRs” hold office hours, help evaluate applicants, and have the opportunity to assist startups in shaping their products, ensuring that those products turn into something teachers would actually use.
The accelerator’s increasingly teacher-centric model has been a boon for startups like ClassDojo and Educreations, which are arguably two its most successful incubations thus far. ClassDojo, for one, recently raised $1.5 million from an impressive list of investors (like Paul Graham, Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, Flixter CEO Joe Greenstein, OpenFeint Founder Jason Citron, Start Fund, General Catalyst, Lerer Ventures and NewSchools Ventures, to name a few). What’s more, the startup has attracted over 3.5 million teachers and students in more than 30 countries by giving teachers a fun, easy way to manage their classrooms and keep students on-task.
Like ClassDojo, Educreations is using mobile technology to make teachers’ lives less painful by giving them an easy way to create, narrate and record video whiteboard tutorials on the web and mobile devices. With its whiteboard now used in over 12,000 schools in 117 countries, the Imagine K12 grad raised $2.2 million from Accel, NewSchools and a flock of angel investors in August.
With each cohort, the Imagine K12 founders are getting a better grasp on how to help founders build successful companies in a rapidly transforming and tricky industry, and its startups are showing more promise as a result.
On Friday, the accelerator launched its third batch of startups, with founders pitching their businesses to investors at Graduation, er, Demo Day — the program’s culminating event. Without further ado, here’s a brief look at the eleven companies to take the stage at Imagine K12’s offices in Palo Alto. [Note: More than a few of the startups are still in beta or private beta and are actively looking for feedback on their products. You can sign up and/or tell ’em what you think on their websites.]
Chalk
Chalk also tracks and stores every response, enabling teachers to get realtime updates on critical documents without having to worry about losing or misplacing files or manila folders. Streamlining workflow and saving trees means teachers get more green. Environmentally and financially speaking, of course.
Chalk is currently in private beta.
Code HS
To do that, through a freemium membership model, the startup provides a curriculum, a library of instructional videos and in-browser programming exercises, along with a support system that gives students access to advice from experts. The goal is to offer CS-class-in-a-box — software that is easy for high schools to integrate and, off-the-shelf-style, doesn’t require teachers to be proficient in computer science to teach it effectively.
Digit Whiz
To help young students learn foundational math skills, Digit Whiz evaluates students abilities, prescribing games and guides that will help them master basic and pre-algebra skills. The service intends to make it easy for teachers to on-board their classes, get started quickly and track student progress. While Brown developed Digit Whiz with her remedial students in mind, the service offers help to students of every ability — and even parents. In essence, Digit Whiz sounds a lot like the math version of another Imagine K12 startup, NoRedInk, which you can find below.
EdCanvas
Tryumph
NoRedInk
The startup won NBC’s $75K Innovation Challenge in September and was featured on the TODAY Show as a result. You can read TC’s in-depth dive into NoRedInk here.
Raise Labs
Securly
SmarterCookie
The more teachers get consistent, targeted feedback, the more effective they become. SmarterCookie takes care of the complexities of private video sharing and feedback channels so that teachers can focus on becoming better, well, teachers.
StudyRoom
Tioki
Beyond that, teachers can create profiles that pull in their relevant links and social profiles, allowing them to share research, show off their accomplishments and link to relevant resources. The goal of which is to help teachers make connections that are actually valuable — and help them to find work, discussions or resources that improve their instruction and potentially their lives.