• TeachBoost

  Participated · Seed · Jun 2014

  TeachBoost offers a platform that simplifies the teacher observation and feedback cycle for administrators and teachers. Administrators use it to schedule and track observations, take notes during observations, tag notes to a rubric, and instantly share final evaluations; teachers set and track goals and create private groups for peer observations and collaboration. In February 2014 the product expanded to include a digital library for creating and sharing free professional development resources. Founded in 2012 and built out of New York City, the company was bootstrapped for three years and operated solely on revenue before this round. The tool is used by 20% of New York City schools, 25% of KIPP schools, and more than 300 schools across 20 states and five countries. With the new funding TeachBoost plans to expand product capabilities and grow headcount from 10 to 14 full‑time employees in the next six months.

• Citelighter

  Participated · Seed · Feb 2014

  Citelighter offers student writing tools and a premium teacher/administrator service that enables assignment, monitoring and improvement of student work. The platform is available as free student tools or a paid premium service for teachers and administrators. Students in nearly 3,800 schools across more than 50 countries use Citelighter. Led by CEO Saad Alam, the company plans to use new funding to enhance the product, expand into additional schools, and grow headcount from 40 to 60 employees. The company is Baltimore, MD–based and targets K-12 education customers. The article reports a $2M Series Seed-2 raise to support these initiatives. Citelighter launched in fall 2011 as a platform and browser extension to help students manage online research, bibliographical data and citations. It built a learning database and tools that let students find relevant materials, automatically cite sources and collaborate via integrations with Google Docs and Microsoft Word. Observing classroom use, the company broadened its focus from a highlighting tool to an "all-purpose writing platform" that captures students' workflows. Citelighter is developing "Cognitive Prints," visualization tools that map each student's step-by-step writing process and produce color-coded, sequential logs teachers can use to analyze work habits. The founders intend the platform to help teachers improve writing proficiency by giving them detailed visibility into students' research and organization. Financially, the company has raised $1.5M from a mix of venture firms and angel investors to fund this product pivot. Citelighter, founded in fall 2011 and led by CEO Saad Alam, offers a browser-based research tool and extensions that let students capture facts, organize projects, export in-text citations, and generate bibliographies. The company launched a paid “Pro” tier that provides access to millions of credible academic articles from over 6,500 sources for $10 per month via a partnership with Cengage (starting with Questia). Pro surfaces premium content in curated "Knowledge Cards" assembled by a vetted team of 125 student "Knowledge Experts" and recommends material based on users’ research patterns. Citelighter has added Chrome and Safari plug-ins on top of an existing Firefox extension and plans to add PDF capture (to pull from Ebsco, JSTOR, and other databases) and social features around Knowledge Cards. The company is positioning itself as an Evernote-like capture tool tailored for students, differentiating from Zotero and Mendeley by focusing on quick, low-friction citation workflows. To support product expansion and Pro, Citelighter is raising a $750K seed round, with participation from media executives and entrepreneurs.

No current team members are available.