It has been six months since the 2018 Boost program ended. These alums have reached and even surpassed milestones since the program. We are very proud of the momentous progress that they have made and want to congratulate them. Let’s catch up with some of our alumni and see what they have been up to!
Before we catch up with our alums, we’re excited to announce our newly launched program, ETS® Accelerate, check it out here! LearnLaunch Accelerator has partnered with ETS to produce a brand new, themed-based program that will provide additional focused resources and value for early stage edtech entrepreneurs. The themes for this new program are Skills for a New Economy and English Language Learning. In the light of our new partnership with ETS, our alumni, Beagle, who has worked closely with ETS will also tell us about their experience with ETS.
Meet Turner and Carolyn, co-founders of Beagle Learning!
Interview with Carolyn Bickers, Co-Founder of Beagle Learning
About Beagle Learning
Beagle Learning helps higher education instructors identify and address gaps in student understanding and drive improvement in 21st-century skills by using real-time analysis of student questions within an integrated deeper learning program.
What are your proudest accomplishments since the program?
On the product side, we launched our MVP and have made some fast iterations. We were awarded an NSF SBIR Phase 1 grant and are applying for a Phase 2 soon. Beagle had its first paid pilot in Spring 2019 and has four committed pilots at Higher Education institutions in Fall 2019. Through LearnLaunch, we were privileged to work closely with Richard Varn, ETS Venture Partner Lead, and we are now considered part of the ETS Fellow program.
What did you find most valuable about LearnLaunch Accelerator?
The LearnLaunch Accelerator provided us with critical industry expertise and guidance in focusing on the Higher Education market. The LearnLaunch Venture Partners and mentors were excellent and generous with their time to help us through our startup’s specific needs.
We have really enjoyed working with ETS and being an ETS fellow has opened many doors to working together. Richard has been an incredible mentor and also has made many connections for us. Some resources ETS has already provided include sponsoring our attendance at multiple conferences, hosting us on their ASU+GSV Skills of A New Economy panel, and we are finalizing the details on a larger Fall 2019 collaboration.
Interview with Jaime Martinez, Founder of Schola.
About Schola
Schola is an online platform that helps connect students with the perfect school. Free of service, Schola helps parents find and enroll their children in the ideal pre-k – 12 schools, whether they are private, charter, or district school. Schola also works with schools to recruit and retain students and streamline the enrollment process.
What are your biggest accomplishments since Boost ended?
Since the program, we were able to raise a seed round and were able to build their product that’s currently in the market. It has been three weeks, and in that time they’ve grown from one state, Arizona, to 16 states. In terms of our team goals, we’ve hired two new people in the past month and even had to move offices since to accommodate our growth. When Schola was at LearnLaunch, we were making $10k Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), and now we’ve almost tripled that. Schola is planning to do the next raise pretty soon, which will likely turn out to be a bigger round than they anticipated.
What did you find most valuable about LearnLaunch Accelerator?
The mentors for sure. Jean Hammond was our main mentor and having her along with all the other folks there was extremely helpful. And I honestly don’t think we would be where we are without LearnLaunch. So, it’s definitely made us think about what we’re doing in a different way. And our time in Boston was very well spent. When we came out of the Accelerator was when we really gained enough traction to raise our first round.
Our third alumni is Mohammed Hisamuddin, founder and CEO of Entri.
About Entri
Entri (www.entri.app) is a Netflix for local language learning. Entri provides different types of learning content (mock/adaptive tests, flash cards, video+podcast lessons) in local languages for job aspirants, that prepares them to get a govt. or private job in India. More than 850k users have used Entri so far, we are acquiring close to 4k new users every day now.
What are your proudest accomplishments since Boost ended?
Entri has raise $1.2 million and have secured 850k users.
What did you find most valuable about LearnLaunch Accelerator?
LearnLaunch has a very helpful network of mentors, advisors and investors which we can tap, to achieve almost anything that you want for our company to grow.
To learn more about the ETS® Accelerate Program and Cohort 1, visit our website, attend a webinar, or reach out.
About LearnLaunch Accelerator.
LearnLaunch Accelerator is the leading early stage edtech startup accelerator. LearnLaunch Accelerator provides the most promising education technology startups worldwide with up to $120,000 in seed funding, a personalized development plan, sector specific curriculum, and a network of industry focused mentors, intensive coaching and all the tools necessary to grow a successful edtech startup. It offers investors a diversified platform of early stage companies in the rapidly growing edtech sector. For more Information, visit www.learnlaunch.com/accelerator or follow us @LearnLaunchX.
