Led by CEO Gideon Stein, LightSail provides an adaptive literacy solution for K-12 education that uses predictive algorithms to match students to a customized library of texts. The reading experience incorporates persuasive learning technologies designed to encourage students to read more texts, for longer durations, and with improved comprehension. The solution offers nearly 5,000 texts from more than 60 publishers, with assessment questions embedded within every text, measures literacy growth in real time, and automatically adapts each student’s library to their precise reading level. LightSail also provides real-time insights to students and educators on metrics such as reading stamina, comprehension, and reading level growth. The company is partnered with more than 500 schools and districts, including the New York City Department of Education, Los Angeles Unified School District, Boston Public Schools, Denver Public Schools, and Evergreen Public Schools. LightSail intends to use the new funding to hire edtech talent and expand product adoption through increased sales and marketing efforts. The company has raised more than $23M to date. LightSail offers tablet-based libraries of over 80,000 standards-aligned texts from more than 400 publishers, each embedded with assessment questions and student-comprehension data. CEO and founder Gideon Stein said the company has surpassed 100,000 student users, up from 75,000 as of March 24. LightSail announced a $3.5 million financing round led by Scott Cook, bringing total funding to date to $12.2 million. The company cites partnerships with large districts including the NYCDOE, LAUSD, Chicago Public Schools, and Denver Public Schools, as well as numerous rural and suburban districts. The majority of the new funding will be used to expand LightSail's District Partnerships team and marketing activities. Over the next 12 months LightSail plans to broaden content available to schools, launch a parent portal to engage families, and conduct multiple efficacy trials with nationally recognized research and academic firms to document student achievement gains.

Total raised

$15M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Mar 2016