Name: +1 Math Website: www.plus1math.com Headquarters: New York, USA Vertical: K-12, STEM Tech: Web App, Mobile App

Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing.

We are creating an online and mobile math app that will help students of all levels master math in a fun and relaxed way.

+1 Math is a gamified, social app for smartphone, tablet and desktop computer that prepares students for standardized tests such as The Common Core, and it lets them learn at their own pace.

We want everyone to have this program, regardless of income, so we're giving this program away for free to students from low-income families.

Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup.

Elie Venezky - Educational Director Phil Cohen - CEO Founder Bios: www.profnetconnect.com/philcohen www.profnetconnect.com/elievenezky

We met through mutual friends many years ago and discovered similar interests and philosophies about education and helping children grow and learn. We came together to form Prestige Prep, an academic tutoring and test preparation company in NYC.

How was the idea for your startup born?

When The Common Core was first introduced, we got a frantic call from Phil's son's math teacher, who said he didn't have enough questions to prepare his students for the test. So Elie created 200 questions that the school used to help kids get ready.

The stress around The Common Core is clear. And Elie and Phil both realized that teachers and students needed something extra to get them prepared and confident about the test. So +1 Math was born.

What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve.

Students aren't learning math in a way that's usable or in a way that sticks. Government tests and standards are moving us away from true math knowledge, not towards it. And on top of that, it's adding stress and anxiety. When you see an 8 year-old crying because she's afraid of an exam, you know we have a problem.

So we're trying to teach math in a fun, relaxed way that meets students where they are (technology, games, social interaction) and relieve the anxiety around math that so many students and their parents feel.

Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them?

Ixl, Udemy, Aleks.

1. +1 Math is gamified and has a strong social component that makes it more attractive to students.
2. +1 Math is easier to use for both students and parents.
3. The presentation of questions on +1 Math is more similar to actual tests than our competitors' presentation of questions, so our program is better at preparing students for their actual tests.

In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next.

We'll be active all over the US.

Who is your target audience.

• Student users grades 4-12
• Parents
• Teachers who would like to use technology in or outside of the classroom for student-personalized skill building, and to augment standard curriculum.

Any student who wants to improve in math. Any student who loves math. Any student who fears math.

Parents who want their child to succeed in math and feel more relaxed around the subject. Parents who are nervous about standardized tests. Parents who care about education.

How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product.

We're meeting students where they are, which means a mixture of gaming and technology. Plus, students have a lot of anxiety around math. When they see that +1Math is a calming, fun way to learn, they'll want to play.

On top of that, there are built in social and (optional) competitive aspects that will attract students.

What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost.

You can find our executive summary as part of our online pressroom: http://budurl.com/plus1math

$60 for a year's subscription. Free for students from low-income families.

If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding.

We will have raised over $75,000 from a Kickstarter campaign, and we are now talking with investors to raise a half million.

Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share.

We are very proud of achieving our Kickstarter goal. It shows that there is a real need for a math program that students want to use.

There is so much anxiety around math. The fact that we are helping alleviate that, and can bring calm to families, makes us very proud.

What are the next steps in growing your startup.

Our beta is in production and we're starting testing with students. We're also speaking with investors to raise capital.

How can people get in touch with you.

Email: plus1math@gmail.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/plus1mathapp Twitter: www.twitter.com/plus1math Instagram: www.instagram.com/plus1math Web: www.plus1math.com Virtual Press Room: http://budurl.com/plus1math

Operation Top 10 Grassroots Movement Google Group Google Community Email: operationtop10@gmail.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/operationtop10 Facebook: www.facebook.com/operationtop10 Instagram: www,instagram.com/operationtop10

Prestige Prep: www,prestigeprep.com Telephone: 800.381.3266

Anything else you would like to add.

Math does not have to cause such anxiety. There are clear and direct ways to teach math so that most people can understand and use it. These skills are important for a lot of jobs.

We love helping students and we love helping families feel relaxed around education, so they can enjoy each other and concentrate on being together and having fun and less on math homework. With this program, we can help a lot of people.

The minimum viable product approach to taking digital products to market presents a conundrum for anyone whether within an organisation or as an entrepreneur. The balance is between delight, a good enough product and the biggest one of them all – budget. Once you have pitched for a rough funding figure only to find that it was half of what you need, you are faced with three questions: go to market with a shoddy product, go to market late once you receive that extra funding, or don’t go to market at all. After all, we don’t usually launch products for charity’s sake. I’ve been there – we’ve all been there.

But there is another way, and it’s about conceiving the minimum viable product to take to market, but before we explore that, let’s take a step back and look at product. How do you conceive a product in the first place? There are 3 core ways:

1. Find a problem – If you can wedge yourself into someone’s life by solving a problem that they always have, you will be well on the way to creating a real need for your product. Facebook did this by remembering birthdays for you and Dropbox solved the eternal problem of the missing USB.
2. Solve a problem- If you can understand the problem that is apparent for a particular niche and state the solution by means of a cool bit of tech, then customers will flock very quickly. Instagram’s rise was all to do with the sharing and upload of photos easily. It saved everyone time and made life easy.
3. Create delight- All the successful games create delight (and some addition!) amongst users. Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja are the best of the new breed in this genre, but there are also games that live off the delight that other create, such as words with friends or whole new worlds such as Grand Theft Auto.

That’s perhaps a simplistic approach, but there is usually more that you need to consider – such as does the benefits of solving the problem outweigh the obstacle and others such as:

• Is the barrier to entry low enough – will you be able to woo new users?
• Discovery – how will your product be found in the first place – and how will you make them take the conversion jump?
• How immediate and frequent is the need?
• Competition – what’s everyone else doing to solved the problem? And how can you garner local placement on the screen of the user?

These are all important questions but what must you do with regards to take to market. In my opinion, the best possible approach is one that is focused on the minimum viable product. A minimum viable product, when talking in digital terms is a strategy for deploying a product with the minimal amount of features.

The main reason to use a minimal viable product approach is to get feedback. If you use a feedback approach from real users, then the benefit is threefold: one, you are building a product users actually want; two; you have a user base of dedicated users who feel part of the product; three, by trusting a select group, you have created an underground maven marketing team of users who will want to push your product for you. On the flip side, utlising a minimum viable product strategy allows a minimum cost fail strategy. Perhaps the product is completely unviable and the product may only be of benefit to a small selection of people – or maybe it’s too early or too late to market. If you launch with a minimum viable product, you can fail at low cost and move on to your next great product and learn from the lessons of this one.

Using a minimum viable product strategy, you are essentially going forward with ongoing loop approach: test – refine – test – refine. Others use the build-measure-learn loop – it all depends on what kind of product you have. Eric Ries popularised the concept of minimal viable product in his book the Lean Startup – and in it he says:

“The minimum viable product lacks many features that may prove essential later on. However, in some ways, creating a MVP requires extra work: we must be able to measure its impact. For example, it is inadequate to build a prototype that is evaluated solely for internal quality by engineers and designers. We also need to get it in front of potential customers to gauge their reactions. We may even need to try selling them the prototype.”

It’s an important point. There is more work using MVP as an approach – but the chances of success are higher because the process of learning is happens as quickly as possible. Asking a potential target market that consists of friends and associate a select number of questions on survey monkey gives some viability but it simply doesn’t compare to the experience of a live product.

Ultimately, MVP is all about the consumer. Creating an MVP strategy is creating a consumer driven strategy. If you can create a ‘deep well’ of users as Paul Graham calls it, it’s likely that those users will become your market. This strategy of focusing a product on a small number of people who need a product a lot of the time rather than a large number of users who need the product a little bit of the time garners excellent and rich feedback data.

What are the extremes of an MVP? Imagine that you need funding for your product – but the concept is too difficult or too expensive to even get to prototype phase. You are left with a few choices: the explanation approach – use a video or some great marketing material to explain what you (will) do. This costs between $1000 and $10,000; the eluding approach – just create a promise of what you hope to achieve and get feedback on the concept; or go manual – trial the whole process without using technology – find customers and ask them what they want and deliver the process using a manual approach. These all seem obvious approaches, but the MVP doesn’t always work as a build, learn and grow strategy. And sometime it’s worth being traditional and spending excessive time upfront to research, plan and predict. That doesn’t mean the going with a minimal viable product removes this process, it just means there is less of a focus on this and more down a Steve Blank approach to customer acquisition.Using a minimum viable approach is a deeply strategic approach to new products. It is pre-planned with rules and guidelines and is prepared to become the best in its niche. It’s good for bootstrappers, for entrepreneurs and for product developers within large corporates – and ultimately works because it’s all about creating a problem solving product that consumers actually want. And that’s what your MVP is your MVP – your minimum viable product is your most valuable person, your secret strategy for product success.

Editor’s Note: This post has first been published on Rahim’s personal blog medeleon.

Udemy, a global marketplace for online courses, has raised a $65 million Series D led by Stripes Group, with participation from Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) and Insight Venture Partners. Stripes Group Founder and Managing Partner Ken Fox will join Udemy’s Board of Directors.

The Series D comes one year after a $32 million Series C and shortly after LinkedIn’s acquisition of Udemy’s main competitor, lynda.com for $1.5 billion.

This latest round brings the total funding raised by Udemy to $113 million. Udemy previously raised $32 million in May 2014, $12 million in November 2012, $3 million in October 2011, and $1 million in August 2010.

Founded in 2010, Udemy was set up as an alternative to market leader lynda.com. Other than the established platform that offers mainly in-house produced content from select instructors, Udemy chose a free marketplace approach, enabling anyone to launch and sell an online course on the platform.

To date, the marketplace offers 30.000 courses from 16.000 instructors with 2.000 new courses being added every month. Udemy claims to have attracted 7.000.000 learners from 190 countries, 30% of them learn on a mobile device.

50% of Udemy’s revenue is generated outside the U.S. which led to the opening of the company’s first overseas office in Dublin, Ireland, and the translation of the course catalog into seven different languages.

Udemy’s top instructors managed to rake in sizeable revenue from their online courses, ranging from $500.000 to $8 million, with the top ten instructors generating over $17 million in combined revenue.

Further Reading

Udemy raises $65 million to continue pioneering a global marketplace and disrupt the future of education | Press Release

In this episode of MEP, Stephen Gilman from Maker State joins the program to discuss the maker movement, why its important, and “making” school fun.  Such a fun discussion!

Guest Bio :

Stephen started teaching in Harlem Middle School in 2000. He saw a lot of flaws in the public school system and decided to take it upon himself to make the changes.  After becoming a non profit after schools program administrator, he began seeing how to implement these changes outside of the public school model.

For the last three years, Stephen has been creating learning environments called maker spaces where kids can take a creative idea and learn how to apply it into a real life skill.

Along with founding MakerState, Stephen also founded the Carnegie Learning Center (a micro-schools incubator) and a founding teacher & dean of Bronx Collegiate (a public school grounded in Outward Bound experiential learning). His proposal for an experiential, badge and mastery-based school/learning model, “Student Union,” was a finalist in the international Mozilla and MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media & Learning Competition.

Stephen was recently named to the Professional Journal Committee of the Association of Teacher Educators. He is the president and founding board of UlsterCorps, a volunteer network in New York.

He is also the author of Nightshade, an historical thriller set in 1702 about a conspiracy to take over the Atlantic slave trade. Stephen enjoys pottery, beekeeping, geocaching, fiction writing, social entrepreneurism, making and playing games, and creativity of all kinds.

He and his seven year old Ben started MakerState together to bring their love of making and learning new things to kids everywhere.

Show Notes:

(02:16) Stephen’s background

(07:59) Tell us about Maker State, why you started it and what you guys do.

(08:54) Expeditionary learning model in a Bronx high school

(10:21) Asking the Center for Creative Education to let him try out the maker space idea that he’s dabbling in with kids after school.

(12:21) The MakerState Program

(13:43) Teaching kids fundamental math and science principles, computer programming, and how to build computer hardware using Minecraft

(17:10) Schools give you the students that they haven’t been able to help. Can you talk about the demographics and the age groups that you’re really seeing a lot of impact with?

(24:52) What sort of results are you seeing? Are you seeing early results or numbers from this implementation?

(27:58) How are your current public school partners responding? Do you think that we can get to a tipping point with these schools? Can we get from those early adopters to the early majority or do we have to build a completely new maker culture from scratch?

(32:22) If you could have dinner with someone you admire, past or present, who would it be and why?

* Ray Croc

* Benjamin Franklin

(36:20) How to contact and support MakerState

http://www.maker-state.com/

@MakerState

For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

Language learning startup Duolingo has raised a $45 million Series D led by Google Capital with participation from existing investors Union Square Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

The round brings the total raised to over $83 million, valuing the company at $470 million.

Along with the investment announcement comes the news that Duolingo now has over 100 million registered users. Furthermore, 100.000 teachers have registered for Duolingo for Schools.

Founded in 2011, Duolingo quickly became a global leader in the language learning space based on its free and mobile first approach. The startup generates revenue from low cost certifications via its Test Center.

Crowdsourced translations by the community for international brands like CNN and Buzzfeed, which were the first source of revenue, are being phased out. Co-founder Luis van Ahn told WSJ that he does not want to get into the current price war in the translation industry and has other revenue streams planned for the near future.

Further Reading

• Duolingo grabs $45 mln from Google Capital | PE Hub
• Google Capital Backs Duolingo to Help Language-Learning App Go Global | WSJ

The EDUKWEST editors put together this curated list of articles from the most knowledgeable sources on the Internet for everybody interested in learning what matters in the Chinese education market today.

Each day our team literally works through hundreds of articles and news items on e-learning, so you don’t have to. We then curate the most relevant and insightful ones into our reading lists on different topics in education technology and market intelligence.

Our reading list on education in China includes the 30 best articles on the topic published in the first half of 2015. It is conveniently sorted by vertical and includes articles on K-12, higher education, Chinese language, politics, and edtech startups.

Just a few interesting numbers on the fast-growing education market in China:

• 230 million pre-K school children
• the government aims to bring all K-12 online in the next ten years
• 300,000 students to receive 3-D printers in school
• 70,000 educational apps today, which is 10% of all apps in China
• 100,000,000 e-learning users in China & 649 million internet users total
• more than 100 edtech startups received funding in 2014

Curated sources for this reading list include Tech in Asia, Technode, CCTV, China Daily, China Morning Post, and various other preeminent news resources.

EDUKWEST sells this reading list for €15, which brings the price per article down to 50 cents only. Conveniently pay via PayPal or contact us for other payment options.

Purchase your digital copy now.

Name: Teachlr Website: www.teachlr.com Headquarters: Caracas, Venezuela Vertical: Lifelong Learning Tech: Web App, Mobile App

Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing.

Teachlr® is an educational marketplace, where anybody can learn through online courses and live customized classes. We also offer a Cloud Learning Management System, which is a product aimed at corporations, academies and universities interested in offering private corporate training to their employees and students. Our mission is to democratize education through technology. We integrate a social network with an e-learning platform, which results in the creation of an educational market where published classes and courses are validated and approved by the Teachlr community.

Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup.

Moisés Annicchiarico, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Rubén Benarroch, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), are childhood friends. Moisés is a Telecommunications Engineer and Rubén a Systems Engineer.

How was the idea for your startup born?

Rubén identified the demand for personalized classes from the comfort of ones home, while working in his previous project that consisted of private lessons on computer basics taught in customers’ residences. Jean Moisés discovers the demand for quick and accessible online assistance and tutorship. He proposes Rubén to develop a platform where live sessions could take place and Teachlr is born.

What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve.

People and organizations need to have easy and personalized access to high quality education.

Students are constantly seeking to learn new skills, but many don’t have the time or money to take classes at a prestigious institution. Teachers need an additional source of income, but have a reduced number of students, a tight schedule, no transportation and no available classrooms.

It is the case for many educational institutions that they generate insufficient funds, count with a limited space capacity, have professors with little availability, while producing high operational costs.

Many companies have untrained personnel and spend too much money in hiring professors and physical spaces to give programs that do not monitor their employees progress.

Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them?

Online courses: ● lynda, Oja.la, Tutellus, Floqq, Udemy and Youtube. ● Coursera.com, Edx, Udacity (MOOCs).

In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next.

We are already active in Latin America and Spain. Our next market would be finding material in Portuguese and get into the Brazilian market.

Who is your target audience.

Students: Latin American 20-55 year old men and women of middle and high income background, interested in learning about technology, multimedia, business and lifestyle. Every theme attracts different kinds of people. For example, young men are drawn to technology, whereas 20-40 year old women are interested in lifestyle.

Experts/instructors: 26-55 year old men and women of middle and high income background from Spain and Latin America, qualified to teach about technology, multimedia, business and lifestyle.

How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product.

Social media presence: daily publications on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Tumblr and our blog

Email marketing campaigns:

• Drip mail marketing to a segmented list of users.
• Transactionals mails
• Alliance with coupon website, Tudescuenton.
• Content marketing (Videos, Articles, Infographics)

Our distribution channels to make our three products (Teachlr Marketplace, Teachlr Organizations and Teachlr Content) reach our customers:

• Web: Teachlr.com is the online marketplace where instructors upload their online courses, which, once approved by our team, are available for purchase on the website. Users acquire every course through their PayPal account.
• Discount websites: Our online courses are offered in discount websites that have access to thousands of potential students in Venezuela and Latin America.
• Affiliates Program: Companies and individuals can become affiliates, who promote the online courses in numerous websites through coupons. They receive a 50% commission.

What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost.

The business model currently implemented on the Teachlr® Marketplace is Business to Customer (B2C): instructors and institutions receive 70% for each course or private lesson sold, and there are no charges for the publication of courses, subscriptions or the withdrawal of credits.

Additionally, the Business to Business (B2B) model named Teachlr Cloud LMS is being developed. This is a cloud service tool that allows companies, institutions and universities to offer and manage training programs for employees and students through private lessons or teachlr.com courses. This Software as a Service (SaaS) model is conducted through monthly subscriptions; the cost per user depends on the volume of licenses needed by the customer.

Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share.

• Alexa ranking #80 (Venezuela) and #18k (global)
• 400 registered teachers
• 2.281 likes on our Teachlr Facebook page, plus 4.199 likes on our Teachlr en Español Facebook page.
• Monthly organic growth of 30%
• 10,000 monthly visits
• Ratio of professor to student is 1:30

What are the next steps in growing your startup.

Objectives established for July 2015:

• Annual income of $224,000
• Enrollment of more that 25 B2B
• Enrollment of more than 100,000 certified teachers
• Enrollment of 320,000 active students
• Customer rating of 4+ out of 5 stars
• Launch of the redesigned platform
• Development and launch of the “Needs System”
• Launch of the B2B model
• Native Mobile Applications
• Better video streaming quality
• Faster processing speed
• Geographic redundancy
• 150.000 likes on Facebook

How can people get in touch with you.

email: info@teachlr.com phone: 582126157994 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Teachlr Twitter: https://twitter.com/teachlr_en Google+: https://plus.google.com/+Teachlr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/teachlr Instagram: https://instagram.com/teachlr?ref=badge Our Blog: https://blog.teachlr.com/

In this episode of MEP, Janelle Allen, founder of Learnwise, joins the program to discuss the importance of instructional design in education and some common misconceptions about online learning. Don’t miss this chat!

Guest Bio

Janelle Allen is an Instructional Designer, with a Bachelors degree in English (Creative Writing) from Georgia State University.

After 6 years of working as a trainer for companies such as Starbucks and Apple, Janelle decided to get serious about online learning. In 2009, after receiving her Masters in Science in Instructional Technology, she began working with Pearson Education to help overwhelmed instructors create amazing online courses. In 2012, she left Pearson to found Learnwise.

Janelle’s mission is to democratize online learning by making it less overwhelming for businesses and entrepreneurs.

 Show Notes

03:06 Janelle’s background

04:43 What is instructional design and why is it important in delivering great courses?

05:57 Do you see instructional design moving forward? Do you see course design as a team effort type thing?

07:55 Can you talk about an ideal example of how an interaction with a faculty member resulted in a great product for the customer?

09:36 What makes for an amazing online course?

11:50 What are the other misconceptions about online learning and how do we overcome those?

15:34 What do you think is the difference between learners who take online courses and those that attend brick and mortar courses?

18:08 If you could have dinner with anyone you admire, past or present, who would it be and why?

*Miles Davis

Links

• learnwise.com
• @JanelleAllen
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/janellesallen

For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

Name: FluentU Website: www.fluentu.com Headquarters: New Jersey, USA Vertical: Language Learning Tech: Web App, Mobile App

Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing.

FluentU brings language learning to life with real-world videos.

FluentU takes music videos, movie trailers, news, and inspiring talks, and turns them into language learning experiences.

Our iPhone app is like a mobile language learning lab.

Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup.

Alan Park is the founder of FluentU. He is a Duke university and Harvard Law School grad who went on to work as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group in China, Japan, and Asia.

Alan does a little bit of everything (content, marketing, product, and taking out the trash).

FluentU has a 20+ person distributed team, most of whom have never met one another. We've found each other virtually.

How was the idea for your startup born?

Alan started to learn Chinese, Japanese, and Korean for over a decade, and used those languages as a management consultant in Asia. FluentU came out of that experience of learning those languages to fluency.

While learning, Alan found that he learned best from authentic content like movies. But the process of learning from authentic content was very painful. It meant he had to look up words, write them down, create flashcards, and manage his learning. FluentU arose to make it possible to learn from authentic content without all of the pain.

What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve.

Language learning products today are boring and don't equip people to learn a language the way that it's actually used. Instead, they train learners to learn words in isolation. Once learners go from the classroom into the real world, they find themselves completely unequipped to engage in actual conversation. And even if they're able to talk, they don't know what to talk about because they haven't really learned about the culture.

For language teachers, exposing students to authentic content is an increasing priority, especially as it becomes a core part of standardized tests like the AP exam. But finding, assigning, and grading authentic content is time consuming and difficult.

Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them?

2 competitors are Yabla and English Central, which are also great video immersion learning tools.

There are 4 differences that come to mind:

1. FluentU personalizes users' experiences based on their history on FluentU. This means that even if 2 users are learning the same word, they will see different things on FluentU. Adjustments are automatically made based on a user's strengths and weaknesses.

2. FluentU is more flexible in how it lets you learn with videos. For example, FluentU lets you import your own vocab list and start learning them with video context. Your learning is enhanced by the videos, without being limited by them. FluentU even has audio content.

3. FluentU has the most useful and comprehensive annotations. FluentU's definitions are produced from scratch by a team of professional editors. Each definition is accompanied by picture, audio, and example sentences that are carefully written to demonstrate the meaning of the word. You can even see how a word is used across different videos on FluentU. This is a level of painstaking detail that is unique to FluentU. http://screencast.com/t/LQOzIPN9Q0g8

4. FluentU's exercises are the most rigorous and are backed by spaced repetition. Other solutions succeed in getting users to remember isolated words. FluentU succeeds in getting users to reproduce entire sentences. FluentU is the most effective in getting people to learn words in context and to true fluency.

In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next.

Our biggest market is the US. FluentU is available for learning Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and English.

For now, we will focus on continuing to improve our product for existing markets - especially schools.

Who is your target audience.

Self-directed language learners and schools.

How many users / downloads does your service have?

Hundred of thousands of individual users and thousands of schools.

How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product.

We have an active blog and are active on social media. We have a free plan that lets users and teachers try FluentU before buying.

What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost.

For individual users, it costs $8 or $18 per month, depending on the plan.

For schools, it currently costs $5 per user per year.

We are planning to raise prices in the future (while grandfathering existing paying users).

If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding.

Self and customer funded. :)

Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share.

We launched our iPhone app on May 28.

Also, achieving liftoff and not needing to seek VC investment. Jeff Bezos has said that "if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that.”

We believe that this is especially true in the edtech space, where there are long sales cycles. We believe that our ability and willingness to have a long term view will be a big competitive edge.

What are the next steps in growing your startup.

Continue to add more content, and further develop the learning management system for schools.

How can people get in touch with you.

support@fluentu.com https://twitter.com/fluentu

Room for anything else you would like to add.

Long term, we believe that SaaS tools will also become the norm in language learning education. We aim to become the go-to SaaS tool for language educators around the world.

The modern economy has no real respect for degrees—other than demanding at least a Bachelors for every position and from every applicant.

Higher education in America has become confused with trade school: everything from four-year computer science degrees to Masters-level management schools are concerned with occupational education. They are advertised as the necessary link between academic life and employment: high schoolers take jobs; college graduates enter careers.

Yet, as every senior knows, some degrees are better than others. By the time college applications start going out, seniors need to start thinking seriously about what they want to do professionally, and avoid degrees—overwhelmingly in the liberal arts fields—that might sound interesting on a hobbyist level, but offer no competitive advantage when it comes to entering the workforce.

In reality, even the most heavily promoted degrees like engineering or business offer little more guarantee of employment than art history or philosophy. Academic advice and the associated ‘conventional wisdom’ surrounding college comes off much the same way as stock market trend-watching: make an investment now in hot industries like technology and or business, and reap the benefits as their value soars in the future!

As anyone (like the vast majority of students) paying off student loan debt can attest, college degrees are most assuredly an investment, for better or worse. But the flipside of the Wall Street wisdom on chasing the hot commodities of the moment is twofold: first, an influx of interest in a single field (or property) changes the game, and dilutes the competitiveness of each new degree-holder entering that field professionally; and second, trends change in a flash, and what seems like a good investment now may not continue paying dividends down the line.

American universities are not trade schools, and degrees do not qualify students to do any particular job, perhaps with the exception of intensive programs like medicine and law (which also tend to take more than the four years of a Bachelors program). But at base, current assumptions about college are wrong, and are being increasingly challenged.

In a mobile age, where facts are constantly changing, the skills in demand ever-shifting, and the world itself undergoing more rapid and dramatic shifts in culture, economy, and social order, spending years in what amounts to a glorified training program end up making less sense than simply learning to adapt.

Despite popular rumor that such liberal arts programs offer little more than deferred poverty and unemployment, the rules for landing a job out of college are roughly the same without respect for the specific degree program:

Network extensively: it matters who you know, not what you know

Get an Internship: networking meets on-the-job learning, before you even graduate

Location: even in a digital world, where you graduate still matters for your recruitment prospects

Adapting and growing is at the heart of the liberal arts experience. Learning to learn is the only real life skill that warrants pursuit, when everything from technical prowess to medical knowledge are prone to being rendered irrelevant in less than a decade. Rather than purchasing an education that expects the world to reward students and the knowledge they (hopefully) acquired, a liberal arts-oriented education expects to prepare students to adapt to an uncertain world, and engage situations where roles and demands are evolving.

So if the value of specific degrees is no sure bet, what about specific campuses—or even campuses themselves?

The outdated notion that simply being among academics and student peers justifies college is being challenged by both technology, and economics. Rutgers professor Sharon Stoerger has researched and written extensively to audiences of students and teachers on how to utilize everything from mobile devices to virtual platform Second Life to enrich online learning experiences.

By pushing the limits of technology, online education not only provides for engagement intellectually, it helps instill some of the skills and technical savvy that will ultimately serve workers better in a globalized economy. Leveraging technology to connect with partners around the world has more lasting value than chatting up coeds across the dormitory hall, however memorable the conversation.

To extract lasting value from the college experience, students are better served to ignore any advice that resembles a weight-loss product commercial: guarantees, testimonials, and wild claims of lasting benefits are fertilizer. Broad skills, flexibility, and social networks are the resources needed to survive and thrive in the modern world. Likewise, the notion that the only place to meet like-minded peers and be intellectually challenged is the same place that offers mandatory cafeteria meal plans and Greek life under devastating national scrutiny is fundamentally flawed. The internet has created plenty of alternatives for the lonely, the curious, and the community-minded.

Even in STEM programs, there is wiggle-room for incorporating liberal elements, and those are the skills that can withstand the whims and fluctuations of a dynamic world. The liberal arts are online and well in the 21st century.

Despite India’s many challenges, the e-learning industry in the country is on a steady path of growth with increasing internet adoption and better low-cost devices like smartphones and laptops.

In the past year visitors from India have surged massively for EDUKWEST. The country now takes the number 2 spot in terms of number of visitors per month on our site, right after our visitors from the U.S., which is another sign for the increased interest in the Indian education technology sector.

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Consequently, several of EDUKWEST’s articles covering the Indian education market now rank in the top 10 articles on a regular basis. We see the segments of online tutoring solutions, e-learning platforms for professional development, low-cost phone and tablet projects, MOOCs as well as investors in the Indian market to be the most popular ones among our audience.

We also see strong initiatives from both entrepreneurs, private investors and the government that will push the market further.

Here are a few interesting numbers to support our findings:

• The Indian education market is predicted to be worth Rs 590,000 crore in FY2014-15
• The education market in India is over $90 billion and growing at a healthy rate of 15 per cent CAGR
• Indian e-learning content market is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.4% from Financial Year 2014 – Financial Year 2018.
• Since April, at least five edtech startups have raised close to $40 million in initial funding
• India overtakes China in tech exits, now ranks in global top 5

If you’re interested in learning more about the opportunities and challenges the Indian e-learning industry faces, you will find great value in our new EdTech Reading List India.

At EDUKWEST we go through a large number of articles each day for our own research, and we put together the 22 most relevant ones on edtech in India for you in this reading list, covering the months of January to June 2015.

With a price of €10, this means that an articles is less than 50 cents. Conveniently pay via PayPal or contact us for other payment options.

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In this episode of MEP, Justin Ballou joins me to discuss about competency based education and his education startup, Socrademy.  Don’t miss it!

Guest Bio

Justin Ballou teaches social studies at Campbell High School in Litchfield, New Hampshire. With a focus on competency-based education and personalized learning, he is constantly pushing the envelope in the current educational environment in order to foster the abilities of students on their journey to becoming life-long learners.

He is the founder of education startup Socrademy, a personalized learning platform that delivers a highly qualified and targeted diploma focused on a student’s future aspirations.

Justin is also an entrepreneur engaged in skateboard equipment and apparel, and independent music production and distribution.

He graduated from Plymouth State University with a B.S. in Social Science and minor in Education.

Show Notes

(01:50) Justin’s background

(06:00) What does competency-based education look like in your classroom? Can you paint the picture – there’s the student picture and the teacher picture.

(10:50) Can you focus on Social Science, what a competency would be and how you test a student on that?

(14:45) How long has Campbell been using competency based education and who started it?

(19:13) Is there any specific student information system or LMS that the school is using?

(21:00) Talk about what Socrademy is and what problems it’s trying to solve.

(25:16) How’s the progress been so far? What has been the positives and negatives of the experience so far in this venture?

(31:00) If you could have dinner with one person, past or present, who would it be and why?

* Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Links

• socrademy.com
• facebook.com/socrademy
• @socrademy

For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

Marking the seventh deal in less than two years, tech education platform Pluralsight announced the acquisition of on-demand live mentoring platform HackHands for an undisclosed amount.

Founded in 2013 by Assis Antunes, Geraldo Ramos and Forest Good HackHands connects coders who are stuck with a problem with on-demand tutors from across the globe. To date HackHands tutors have given over 77.000 minutes of live help.

Pluralsight will integrate HackHands in its current portfolio of services with sessions starting at $1 per minute. Aaron Skonnard, founder and CEO of Pluralsight also imagines that learners will eventually turn into mentors, growing the network of on-demand tutors on the platform and boosting Pluralsight’s global community.

To date Pluralsight has raised nearly $170 million in venture capital since 2013 after a long period in which the startup grew organically from revenue. Its biggest competitor lynda.com got acquired by LinkedIn in April for $1.5 billion.

Further Reading

• Pluralsight Acquires Live Mentoring Service HackHands | Press Release
• Pluralsight + HackHands: Enhancing online learning with live mentoring | Aaron Skonnard

Link

hackhands.com

After a quiet period, the language learning vertical within education technology is on the upswing once again with young, innovative startups entering the arena attracting a new generation of language learners.

Certainly, it’s the established players that are only too willing to satisfy the growing demand. However, there is now a plethora of new and hungry startups in the language learning space coming in the market whose offers go beyond digitized textbooks and English training only. And it’s startups we specialize in at EDUKWEST.

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Overall, the online language market is doing well and growing at a CAGR of 10.04 over the period of 2014-2019. Tech solutions for learning English are booming in China, with growth of 23.6 percent in the past five years, and the Middle East, with an estimated market size of $215.7 million by 2018.

Our Startup List: Language Learning Global gives you access to over 150 edtech startups in the language education space across the globe. Each entry is carefully researched and covers the following points (when information is publicly available):

• Company Name, Website
• Country, City
• Founding Date, Founders
• B2C, B2B, Vertical, Type, Age Group, Language
• Tech
• Investment, Accelerator
• User / Download numbers
• CrunchBase / AngelList Profile

Key Findings

The 150+ language learning startups we tracked for this list have raised over $480 million in the past 15 years, with OpenEnglish ($120m), TutorGroup ($115m), 51Talk ($65m), Duolingo ($38m) and Babbel ($32m) leading the list.

In terms of popularity we see the verticals of ESL (English as Second Language), self-paced online language courses, online learning communities and language exchange, tutoring platforms and marketplaces leading the list.

• ESL: 42
• Online Course: 23
• Community: 19
• Marketplace: 11

51 language learning startups on this list are located in the USA, 63 in Europe (including Russia) and 24 in Asia.

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What is a Startup List

EDUKWEST Startup Lists exclusively contain startups, companies whose image is one of a digital company, and whose main business, if not exclusively, is generated through their online presence. We therefore exclude traditional businesses from our lists that have added online components to their portfolio as an additional revenue stream but remain focused on their real-life operations.

Startups in our definition are new companies with high future growth potential that are exploring a new area or niche in the education market, and are (often) in search of their business model. They don’t need to be venture funded but can be entirely bootstrapped, or have an “exit” strategy. Startups included in our lists are often, but not exclusively, rather young companies.

Purchasing this Startup List will help you to analyze the most promising markets and verticals for online language learning products worldwide and to evaluate the different market segments within online language learning.

The Startup List comes in Excel format, so you can sort it easily by market segment, investment and other variables or add your own data to it. You also get a glossary, explaining how we define the different verticals in the language learning market.

With this Startup List you will be able to see how startups approach the global language learning market, track down competitors and what they do. In many cases you also get data on how many users the listed language learning startups have today as well as how much venture capital the startups raised.

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In this episode of MEP, the co-founder and CEO of Achievery, Damian Ewens, joins the program to chat about badging, micro credentialing and skills-based education. Don’t miss it!

Guest Bio:

Damian Ewens is the CEO of Achievery, a global platform for recognizing and verifying new and emerging skills, standards, and credentials.

Damian holds an MA in Education (Mathematics) fromStanford University and a BS in Economics from Santa Clara University. He taught in grades 6-12th in some of the most innovative schools in the country. After teaching, he worked closely with the founders of Big Picture Learning, an international system of schools based on personalization and real world learning, where he supported overall strategic initiatives.

Prior to Achievery, he led the development of one of the first credit-bearing after school systems in the country as the founding Director of The Hub, the high school initiative of the Providence After School Alliance.

A native of Providence, Rhode Island, Damian is also an avid surfer, local DJ and events producer. He lives in Providence with his wife, Stephanie Alvarez Ewens, and their two daughters.

Show Notes:

(2:00) Damian’s background

(09:30) What was it that you did make a connection about in the formal setting as a learner yourself and the kind you’re seeing through the students you’ve had and now, the customers you talk with?

(10:55) What is Achievery, what are you trying to accomplish, and what kind of progress have you made so far?

(14:50) I was wondering, in the formal K-12 setting, who is threatened by this [credentialing] or what are you seeing as far as skepticism?

(19:55) If colleges are not willing to differentiate themselves, or attempt to differentiate themselves and actually show value through the market…

(23:20) Are you working with schools such as Southern New Hampshire University,Western Governors, those type of schools, and also, are you working with companies, and in what way are you working with them?

(26:00) If you could have dinner with one person you admire, past or present, who would it be and why?

*Richard Feynman

For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

Tech solutions for learning English are booming in China, with growth of 23.6 percent in the past five years, and the Middle East, with an estimated market size of $215.7 million by 2018.

Our Startup List: ESL Global gives you access to over 50 edtech startups in the English as Second Language space across the globe.

Each entry is carefully researched and covers the following points (when information is publicly available):

• Company Name, Website
• Country, City
• Founding Date, Founders
• B2C, B2B, Vertical, Type, Age Group, Language
• Tech
• Investment, Accelerator
• User / Download numbers
• CrunchBase / AngelList Profile

Key Findings

The 50+ ESL startups we tracked for this list have raised over $365 million in the past 15 years, with OpenEnglish ($120m), TutorGroup ($115m), 51Talk ($65m), Voxy ($18m) and EnglishCentral ($14m) leading the list.

In terms of popularity within ESL we see the verticals of live tutoring, online schools and self paced online courses taking the top spots.

13 ESL startups on this list are located in the USA, 11 in Europe and 10 in Asia.

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What is a Startup List

EDUKWEST Startup Lists exclusively contain startups, companies whose image is one of a digital company, and whose main business, if not exclusively, is generated through their online presence. We therefore exclude traditional businesses from our lists that have added online components to their portfolio as an additional revenue stream but remain focused on their real-life operations.

Startups in our definition are new companies with high future growth potential that are exploring a new area or niche in the education market, and are (often) in search of their business model. They don’t need to be venture funded but can be entirely bootstrapped, or have an “exit” strategy. Startups included in our lists are often, but not exclusively, rather young companies.

Purchasing this Startup List will help you to analyze the most promising markets and verticals for online language learning products worldwide and to evaluate the different market segments within online language learning.

The Startup List comes in Excel format, so you can sort it easily by market segment, investment and other variables or add your own data to it. You also get a glossary, explaining how we define the different verticals in the language learning market.

With this Startup List you will be able to see how startups approach the global ESL market, track down competitors and what they do. In many cases you also get data on how many users the listed language learning startups have today as well as how much venture capital the startups raised.

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Name: Degreed Website: www.degreed.com Headquarters: San Francisco, USA Vertical: Higher Education, Lifelong Learning Tech: Web App

Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing.

Degreed turns learning into skills. Our unique platform allows individuals and organizations to find, track, and recognize ALL learning. We're learning a million different things from a million different places, throughout the course of our lives. ALL of that learning should count for something, we're giving learners a new form of academic credentialing. Our mission is to jailbreak the degree.

Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup.

David Blake, Founder and CEO was part of the founding team at Zinch (started in 2007 and was acquired by Chegg). Eric Sharp, Co-Founder and CTO.

How was the idea for your startup born?

Ever since David took his SAT's in high school he's been fascinated by the model of higher education. This curiosity turned into a passion and an obsession to create better systems for the future of education and examining what that future will look like. Degreed was created because we all feel frustrations with the current higher education process and the problems with the credentials that are offered by higher ed.

What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve.

We believe that the college degree- the current de-facto way we measure education today, fails us in providing a totally complete picture of what we know and can do. We are helping people unlock opportunities through validating their lifelong education from any source.

Who is your target audience.

Individual learners and companies who are looking for a better way to track, measure and recognize all knowledge and skills.

What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost.

Individual profiles are free for users. Enterprise clients use Degreed as the only enterprise learning portal built for learners first. This offers Administrators the flexibility to allow employees to learn at will and a simplified way to manage and track employee learning.

If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding.

$1.8M Seed, $7M Series A. Series A round led by Signal Peak Ventures and Peak Ventures.

How can people get in touch with you.

social media: Twitter @degreed Email: Munk@degreed.com or David@degreed.com

In this episode of MEP, David McCool, President and CEO of Muzzy Lane, joins the program to talk about educational gaming and education technology in general.

Guest Bio:

David McCool has been in the software industry for over 20 years. He co-founded Muzzy Lane Software in 2002 and serves as its President and CEO. Dave has played a key role in the design of Muzzy Lane’s software and games. He led Muzzy Lane’s very successful launch of the Making History Gaming Headquarters, an interactive website that allows Making History players to chat, share game mods, review and rate content, and post After Action Reports. Prior to Muzzy Lane Dave co-founded Aptis Communications, a VC-funded developer of carrier- class networking products, in 1997. As Director of Software Dave built and ran a 25 person software group and was the architect of the Aptis software system. The company was sold to Nortel Networks in 1998 and went on to do more than $600 million dollars in revenue from its CVX product line.

Dave began his career at Shiva Corporation, a developer of network-based peripherals, in 1987 as the 3rd employee. During his 10 years at Shiva he rose from Software Engineer to Business Unit Manager, also playing key software design and management roles along the way. Shiva went public in a very successful IPO in 1994. Dave graduated fromMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1987 with a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Show Notes:

(01:55) Dave’s background

(04:11) I’d like to dig into the process in the development of the game. Just my assumption, tell me if I’m right or wrong, and try to elaborate on it. You kind of leverage the internal talents you have of your developers and designers, and then you also partner with these content providers and subject matter experts in the development of these games. Is that correct?

(06:00) Is it just publishers that you’re working with and some instructors and subject matter experts? Do you see something that’s more commercial with some of the games that you’re coming out with or are you just focused on working inside the formal schooling?

(07:00) Niall Ferguson

(07:44) What are the other future projects, what are the current projects you’re working on now?

(08:53) I always like to ask about the efficacy of some of these initiatives. Do you have any data or analytics that you’ve worked with the publishers on how students have engaged and how these have led to students’ success or student outcomes?

(09:53) Do you see any future iterations now that we’re seeing some of these really new emerging models come in education as far as competency-based education, skills-based learning? Do you see an alignment or a fit for educational gaming as you see it with these new models?

(10:29) College for America

(12:17) What do you see as a future developments in the next five to six years with educational gaming?

(13:35) On Nintendo and kids on iPads playing games

(14:15) What gets you most excited about the future of education and learning?

(15:45) What about what gets you most frustrated about the future of education and learning?

(16:35) You’ve been successful in this space since 2002. With all the influx of venture capital and movement in education technology in general, what is your take on it? What do you think the implications are of the increased interest in education technology?

(18:08) If you could have dinner with one person you admire, past or present, who would it be and why?

*Winston Churchill

 Links:

• http://muzzylane.com/
• http://making-history.com
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Muzzy-Lane-Software/11092794179
• https://twitter.com/muzzylane
• http://www.mhpractice.com/

For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

Data analytics platform BrightBytes has raised a $33 million Series C led by Insight Venture Partners with participation of Bessemer Venture Partners, Rethink Education and Learn Capital. Nick Sinai, Venture Partner at Insight Venture Partners, will join the BrightBytes board of directors.

Founded in 2012, the San Francisco-based startup previously raised $18.5 million across several rounds, bringing the total raised to $51.5 million.

BrightBytes data analytics platform enables school administrators to better manage tasks like technology efficacy, dropout prevention, at-risk student identification, data privacy and safety. According to BrightBytes, approximately 1 in 5 schools in the United States use the Clarity platform. At the time of its Series B in March 2014 the ratio was 1 in ten schools.

The new capital will be used to grow the product’s user base among K-12 teachers and to grow the team.

Further Reading

BrightBytes Receives $33 Million Series C Led by Insight Venture Partners to Further Accelerate Growth | PR Newswire

Links

brightbytes.net

Education Entrepreneurs, the non-profit that was part of UP Global and ran Startup Weekend EDU, merges with New Orleans-based edtech incubator 4.0 Schools.

The merger is a result of the acquisition of UP Global by TechStars in June. While TechStars follows a for-profit model, UP Global and Education Entrepreneurs operated as non-profits. Under the new ownership grants by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation could no longer be operated.

Under the merger, 4.0 Schools will operate and grow the Startup Weekend EDU events in the United States while the Techstars Community Programs team will continue to service Startup Weekend Education events taking place outside of the U.S.

Education Entrepreneurs program manager John Baldo joins the 4.0 Schools team full-time while Mandela Schumacher-Hodge is stepping down from her role as Director.

Further Reading

• Techstars Partners with 4.0 Schools to Grow Education Entrepreneurs | 4.0 Schools

Link

educationentrepreneurs.co