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February 10, 2014 11:30 am GMT
This week, Engrade put the finishing touches on an emblematic story in the world of education startups. High school student Bri Holt heard enough complaining from classmates (and teachers) about the fact that there were no good tools to let them view their grades online. So, having taught himself some web development skills, he decided to build a simple online gradebook for his school. Holt’s gradebook found favor among his teachers and at his school, but it took time. Holt soon graduated and moved on to other pursuits. In 2010, seven years later, the online gradebook had found significant organic adoption among teachers, enough that Holt decided to officially turn it into a business and expand it into something larger — Engrade. Fast forward to this week, and publishing giant McGraw-Hill Education agreed to purchase Holt’s online gradebook — now better known as Engrade — for what TechCrunch hears from sources was around $50 million. To education entrepreneurs, it’s an enviable outcome and a path (albeit perhaps not a totally replicable one) worth emulating. All in all, the process, from founding to sale, took over 10 years. Building and selling an education company (for any real return) takes years, maybe even decades. If you build something that solves a problem and that your customer really needs, adoption and customer acquisition will happen for you. Teachers love simple tools that make their lives easier, and if you build one for them, and work with them to improve it, they’ll take care of you. In the end, it appears to be a positive outcome for Engrade’s founders, its team and its investors. The company had raised about $8 million total over two rounds, including from NewSchools Ventures, Zac Zeitlin, Expansion Venture Capital, Kapor Capital, Javelin Venture Partners, Rethink Education and Samsung Ventures, among others. But what’s Engrade and what does it do? Saying that all entrepreneurs need to do is build, amazing tools for their customers, and they’ll have it made makes it sound easy. It’s not, and in education, it’s even harder. Building a simple, well-designed online gradebook is all well and good, but Engrade wasn’t alone. Others were trying to do the same — and building great products at that — but many of them were forced to pivot or join up with other tools to build an education suite. Plus, in the end, a gradebook is more feature than
Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/GUgjDNKRFj8/
McGraw-Hill Buys Engrade For ~$50M As It Moves Away From Textbooks, Towards A Future Of SaaS
This week, Engrade put the finishing touches on an emblematic story in the world of education startups. High school student Bri Holt heard enough complaining from classmates (and teachers) about the fact that there were no good tools to let them view their grades online. So, having taught himself some web development skills, he decided to build a simple online gradebook for his school. Holt’s gradebook found favor among his teachers and at his school, but it took time. Holt soon graduated and moved on to other pursuits. In 2010, seven years later, the online gradebook had found significant organic adoption among teachers, enough that Holt decided to officially turn it into a business and expand it into something larger — Engrade. Fast forward to this week, and publishing giant McGraw-Hill Education agreed to purchase Holt’s online gradebook — now better known as Engrade — for what TechCrunch hears from sources was around $50 million. To education entrepreneurs, it’s an enviable outcome and a path (albeit perhaps not a totally replicable one) worth emulating. All in all, the process, from founding to sale, took over 10 years. Building and selling an education company (for any real return) takes years, maybe even decades. If you build something that solves a problem and that your customer really needs, adoption and customer acquisition will happen for you. Teachers love simple tools that make their lives easier, and if you build one for them, and work with them to improve it, they’ll take care of you. In the end, it appears to be a positive outcome for Engrade’s founders, its team and its investors. The company had raised about $8 million total over two rounds, including from NewSchools Ventures, Zac Zeitlin, Expansion Venture Capital, Kapor Capital, Javelin Venture Partners, Rethink Education and Samsung Ventures, among others. But what’s Engrade and what does it do? Saying that all entrepreneurs need to do is build, amazing tools for their customers, and they’ll have it made makes it sound easy. It’s not, and in education, it’s even harder. Building a simple, well-designed online gradebook is all well and good, but Engrade wasn’t alone. Others were trying to do the same — and building great products at that — but many of them were forced to pivot or join up with other tools to build an education suite. Plus, in the end, a gradebook is more feature thanOriginal Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/GUgjDNKRFj8/
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