• Fiveable

  Participated · Equity · Oct 2020

  Fiveable started as a free online learning community focused on helping high school students pass AP exams through livestreamed “cram shops,” study guides and an active Discord. The company is evolving into a broader social learning platform that enables student-directed spaces and multiplayer study experiences. It acquired Hours, a virtual study platform, to incorporate shared timers, task lists and study-session features into its roadmap. Fiveable prioritizes growth over monetization for now and keeps its platform entirely free to users. The startup reports more than 7.3 million students have used the platform with 3x year‑over‑year growth, a Discord community of over 25,000 users, and when it previously charged for access it granted more than 3,000 scholarships. The team includes over 50 paid student interns and a diverse staff, and the new funding will be used to grow the team and build more student-led online spaces. Fiveable combines educational content, community, and collaboration to support high school students with a focus on social learning. The platform hosts more than 5,000 pieces of content—study guides, live streamed lessons, and Q&A forums—and serves 1.5 million high school students. Students who studied with Fiveable achieved a 92% pass rate on Advanced Placement exams. The company offers Fall and Spring Fiveable Courses covering all 38 AP subjects with live instruction, practice assignments, feedback, and TA support. Fiveable is building a reimagined social learning community to address isolation and motivation, with an 800-student “Founding Members” team informing product design and a beta community planned for launch this winter. The recently secured funds will be used to propel that social learning experience and expand community offerings. Fiveable builds live-streamed learning sessions and online communities to help high school students prepare for Advanced Placement exams. The company was one of eight startups selected for AT&T’s Aspire Accelerator, which pairs mentorship with exposure to AT&T’s 5G capabilities. As part of the accelerator Fiveable will receive $125,000, including a $100,000 investment from AT&T Aspire, and the program culminates in a December demo day. Earlier, Fiveable won a $25,000 investment in a virtual competition run by ECMC Foundation and Chloe Capital. Founder and CEO Amanda DoAmaral said the company is positioned for growth as remote and online learning expand. The article notes the accelerator connected Fiveable with other top-tier investors and that additional funding is likely. Fiveable is a social learning platform that provides interactive test-prep content, live-streamed lessons, trivia review games, study guides, and a community forum with live support. The company recently dropped its paywall and launched a free, student-first platform while aiming to reach 100,000 student users this spring. Fiveable serves nearly 40,000 students who have achieved a 92% AP exam pass rate using the platform, and it employs more than 180 active content creators. Core offerings include weekly live streams, personalized dashboards, and paid “Cram Passes” for intensive pre-exam review sessions. The company plans to expand the number of AP subjects it covers and to add test-prep resources for the SAT and ACT. Fiveable was founded in 2018 by Amanda DoAmaral and is based in Milwaukee.

• Bright Cellars

  Participated · Equity · May 2018

  Bright Cellars is a six-year-old, Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based subscription wine seller that personalizes selections by using customer data to guide winemaker partners. The company shifted from sending third-party wines to commissioning and tweaking proprietary blends based on member preferences. It says it has tested around 600 wines and typically has 40–50 wines live on the platform at any time. Bright Cellars declined to share subscriber counts but reported an acceleration in new subscribers during the pandemic; average bottle price on the platform is $20–$25. The company ships primarily from Santa Rosa and works with grape suppliers on the U.S. West Coast as well as internationally. It remains focused on D2C, is largely decentralized, and sees opportunities to monetize its consumer data or partner with legacy wine firms in the future. Bright Cellars is a nearly four-year-old, 40-person Milwaukee startup that sells wines directly to consumers on a subscription basis. The company uses a quiz to create taste profiles and personalize monthly wine selections for its members. It is also quietly building a portfolio of its own wines with different suppliers while continuing to ship under others' labels. Founders Richard Yau and Joe Laurendi say the member data they collect is valuable, and although Bright Cellars does not sell its findings today, it may offer aggregated insights in the future. The founders were roommates at MIT and remained in Milwaukee after early admission to the gener8tor accelerator. The broader market shows potential: consumers spent roughly $3 billion on wine delivered to doorsteps last year, and direct-to-consumer wine shipments rose 9% to 6.3 million cases between 2017 and 2018. Bright Cellars is a Milwaukee-based personalized wine subscription service powered by a data-science-driven engine that captures direct feedback to understand millennial wine preferences. The service delivers curated wine selections to subscribers based on that data-science profiling. Led by co-founder and CEO Richard Yau, the company completed the gener8tor accelerator program in 2015. Its subscriber base has grown to more than 22,000 members and revenue has grown tenfold. The team has more than 40 employees. The recent funding will be used to continue growing operations in Milwaukee. Bright Cellars is a Milwaukee-based personalized wine subscription service founded in 2014 by MIT graduates Richard Yau (CEO) and Joseph Laurendi (CTO). The company uses a machine-learning algorithm developed by its co-founders to match members to wines. After each wine is reviewed by members, the recommendation engine learns more about their actual preferences. Bright Cellars graduated from the gener8tor accelerator in May 2015. The company has 11 employees and intends to use the seed funding to continue building out a complete member experience and to grow the team. The recent financing will support product and team expansion efforts.

No current team members are available.