Participated · Seed · Nov 2020

Unruly Studios develops movement-based educational products that combine physical activity with math and coding practice for elementary and middle school students. Its flagship offerings, Unruly Math and Unruly Code, are designed to reduce screen time while boosting engagement and collaboration in classrooms. The company reports over 40 million stomps across North America, reflecting significant user interaction with its products. Unruly is expanding into general education and after-school programs, including a partnership with the Brains and Motion after-school program and state-level collaborations across the U.S. and Canada. The team has added senior hires to accelerate go-to-market and product development, including a new President/COO and product and marketing leaders with K-12 experience. The company is actively developing new movement-based learning concepts and plans additional product lines and market expansions to support growth. Unruly is based in Boston and emphasizes inclusive, active learning experiences for K-12 settings. Unruly Studios builds Unruly Splats — physical programmable floor buttons plus a virtual app — that light up, make sounds, and collect points when stomped, allowing students to code game rules. The product blends coding with physical movement to create playful, collaborative, and inclusive STEM lessons. The company primarily targets schools and districts and distributes Splats via a subscription business model shared among teachers. Unruly Studios also provides ongoing coaching, lesson-planning support, and community resources to help teachers integrate the tool over time. Operating traction cited in the articles includes roughly 1 million “stomps” from tens of thousands of kids and rising demand during the 2020 pandemic. The company began with a successful Kickstarter in 2017 and shipped its first units in 2018. Unruly Studios develops Unruly Splats — durable floor buttons that light up, play sounds, and can be programmed by kids with a paired tablet — plus a companion app preloaded with recess-style games. The products are aimed at children ages 6+ to help them build coding and STEM skills through active, recess-style play. Splats are compatible with Apple iPad, Android tablets, and Chromebooks, with additional integrations coming soon. Led by CEO and founder Bryanne Leeming, the company intends to use recent funding to grow the team and build a user community. Unruly plans to continue expanding its footprint globally. The company raised a $1.8M seed round to support these efforts. Unruly Studios is a Boston-based edtech company that builds a gamified coding device aimed at introducing children to STEM. The company released its Splat product during its 12-week participation in NextFab's fall 2017 RAPID accelerator; Splat seeks to introduce kids to STEM through active play. NextFab selected Unruly as the first recipient of additional growth capital from a $100,000 follow-on fund, with a $50,000 investment expected to close at the end of the week. NextFab's RAPID accelerator began providing up to $25,000 in seed capital to participating startups in 2017. Unruly was also selected by two other accelerators, AT&T Aspire in San Francisco and MassChallenge in Boston. The follow-on investment is intended to help the company maintain momentum and accelerate growth.

Participated · Equity · Feb 2019

CourseStorm is an online class registration and enrollment management platform based in Orono, Maine. Led by co-founder and CEO Brian Rahill, it enables small and medium-sized local programs to register students and process payments for classes across industries, including community education, health and wellness, workforce development, after-school programs, and corporate training. The company has clients in 44 states, from a small township in Maine and a network of swim camps in Ohio to a seven-hospital healthcare system and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. To date it has registered more than 225,000 students for classes. CourseStorm completed a $1.15M early round of financing that included co-investment from CEI Ventures, Maine Venture Fund and LearnLaunch of Boston. The investment will enable the company to expand its reach. CourseStorm provides course-registration software to education organizations and is based in Orono. Its platform is used by approximately 100,000 students to register for classes, a milestone the company recently reached. With that demonstrated traction, the company planned to ramp up its sales and marketing efforts. To support that plan, CourseStorm pursued outside capital and opened a Series A equity offering. The company has raised $760,000 so far toward a $1 million offering. CEO Brian Rahill said the round was initially going to close at $710,000 but remained open due to additional investor interest.