Participated · Equity · Mar 2021

Acadeum operates a course-sharing platform that enables higher-education institutions to create academic partnerships and place students in online courses. More than 460 colleges and universities use its network to provide access to needed courses. The platform supports a wide range of learners, including high school students and full-time workers, to help them stay on track for timely graduation. Acadeum’s technology also supports sharing across national and regional consortia, including CIC, League for Innovation in the Community College, and the Southern Regional Education Board’s HBCU‑MSI consortium. The company has partnered with Coursera to expand institutions’ offerings of professional certificates aligned with workforce needs. Acadeum is led by CEO David Daniels and is based in Austin, TX. Acadeum operates Course Share, a marketplace that enables colleges and universities to form course-sharing consortia and allow students to access online courses from other institutions. The platform provides a global catalog of more than 40,000 online courses and powers consortia created by associations including the Council of Independent Colleges, the League for Innovation, the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, and the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas. More than 300 colleges and universities use Acadeum’s cross-enrollment platform and over 14,000 students have taken courses shared through it. Founded in 2016 and led by CEO Josh Pierce, the company is based in Austin, Texas. In March 2021 Acadeum raised $5M in funding. Backers named in the raise included Rethink Education, Socratic Ventures, Lumina Foundation and LearnStart. Acadeum develops the Academic Sharing Platform™, a consortial course‑sharing system that lets faculty review and select courses from participating institutions that count toward graduation, GPA, and financial aid. The platform facilitates exchange of academic resources, student and enrollment data, and financial payments among member colleges and universities. Founded in 2016 and based in Austin, Texas, Acadeum supports formation of consortia including the Council of Independent Colleges, the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, and Digitex. To date the platform has powered more than 150 separate consortia and enabled 5,000 students to complete courses. Institutions using the model have collectively generated over $10 million in additional revenue and used the approach to advance retention and graduation solutions. The company plans to use the new funding to grow and strengthen communities of course‑sharing institutions and expand use of best practices through the consortial model.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2018

Meritize is an education lender based in Frisco, Texas, led by CEO Chris Keaveney. The company uses individuals' academic, military and work achievements to enhance credit evaluation through a proprietary merit-based lending program. Its Meritize SkillsBuilding™ platform supports skills-based education and employer talent development to help close the skills gap and build skills-based careers. The lender leverages academic and experiential data to increase access to educational funding and improve outcomes. Meritize will use the Series A proceeds to scale operations, grow, and enhance its technology. Meritize is a Frisco, Texas-based student lending platform that uses an individual’s academic data to improve credit evaluation and broaden access to career-focused education financing. The company partners with schools and employers to offer student loans, financing for employer training and career success services. Meritize was co-founded by Chris Keaveney and Phillip Stegner and launched in January 2017, with full-phase lending beginning in the third quarter. It raised seed capital to accelerate growth and continue building its lending platform. The business plans to deploy the new funds to support sales and marketing and expand the team as it scales.