Schoology, a LMS for K-12 and higher education, has raised a $32 million Series D led by JMI Equity with participation from existing investors FirstMark Capital, Intel Capital, and Great Road Holdings. The company has raised a total of $57 million.
Founded in 2009, Schoology is used in more than 130 countries, reaching over 12 million users. In the past year Schoology added over 400 enterprise customers, surpassing 1000 institutions in K-12 and higher education.
Schoology Raises $32 Million To Bring Personalized Learning to Every Student
JMI Equity Joins Existing Investors in Series D Round, Capitalizing on Recent Growth and Widespread Adoption of its Learning Management System
NEW YORK—November 10, 2015—Schoology, the education technology company that puts collaboration at the heart of the learning experience, today announced $32 million in financing led by JMI Equity, a growth equity firm focused on investing in leading software and services companies, with additional participation from existing investors FirstMark Capital, Intel Capital, and Great Road Holdings. This latest investment brings Schoology’s total funding to $57 million. Concurrent with the financing, Jit Sinha, General Partner at JMI Equity, will join the Schoology board.
A market leader in Learning Management System (LMS) adoption with more than 12 million users in more than 130 countries, Schoology will use the new funding to make product engineering investments to increase the scope and power of its education cloud, which connects the people, content, data, and systems that fuel education. It also plans to expand distribution so it can reach more schools, districts, colleges and universities around the globe.
“School districts and colleges have been striving to personalize the education of every student for years, but there hasn’t been a teaching and learning platform that could do it. The industry is littered with failed point solutions that didn’t integrate easily and weren’t easy to use—which resulted in extremely low adoption rates and failures to deliver real educational value,” said Jeremy Friedman, CEO, Schoology. “We built the first education cloud that allowed educators and students to collaborate and connect all digital resources on one intuitive platform. Because we designed our platform to be student-centric and we built the enterprise functionality out from there, we’ve been able to combine unparalleled user adoption with the strongest platform capabilities in the industry.”
More institutions are turning to a robust LMS to reign in disparate systems and create more opportunity for individualized learning. Entities like Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)—the second largest school district in the country, who recently purchased Schoology—are leading the way for the more than 13,000 U.S. school districts. Estimates suggest that only 25 percent of school districts have deployed an LMS, and those that have are looking to replace legacy systems.
“In our conversations with customers, it was clear that they wanted a comprehensive platform that covers the entire education ecosystem—from course management to assessment, collaboration, and analytics—that allows school districts and colleges to achieve desired student outcomes,” said Sinha. “Schoology is the only company that delivers that in a single platform. The company is also unique in its ability to match enterprise-caliber technology with the intuitive usability of social networks. The company’s design, collaboration-first approach, and subscription cloud-based business model make it a leader in the space and we are excited to be partnering with Schoology to help drive the next phase of growth.”
This news comes during a flagship year for Schoology. The company has added 400 new enterprise customers in the past year—surpassing 1,000 total universities, colleges, and K-12 school districts—including deployments such as St. Paul (MN) Public Schools, Seattle (WA) Public Schools, Henrico County (VA) Public Schools, Boise (ID) Independent School District, and Mohave Community College. It also recently expanded its senior management team, with the appointments of Norman Weissberg as Chief Revenue Officer, Melton Littlepage as Chief Marketing Officer, and Michael Brinkman as Chief Technology Officer.
About JMI
JMI Equity is a growth equity firm focused on investing in leading software and services companies. Founded in 1992, JMI has invested in over 120 businesses in its target markets and has raised more than $3 billion of committed capital. Combining domain expertise and active partnership, JMI works with management teams to build market-leading businesses and create long-term shareholder value. Realized investments from JMI funds include Autotask, Axeda, BigMachines, Eloqua, Ellucian, Gemcom, PowerPlan and ServiceNow. For more information, visit www.jmi.com.