Company Raises $16m in Seed Financing from Key Zoom Investors and Education Leaders
ClassEDU Inc. today announced its launch and the closing of $16 million in seed financing. The funding will be used to bring the company’s Class for Zoom product to market.
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Teachers using Zoom today need frictionless tools to take attendance, hand out assignments, give quizzes, grade items, or even talk with students one-on-one. Class for Zoom adds all of these capabilities and more.
“Due to COVID, millions of students are learning online, and education is changed forever,” said Michael Chasen, ClassEDU co-founder and CEO and former Blackboard co-founder and CEO. “As the father of three school-age kids, I have a front row seat to how challenging remote learning is. That’s why we designed Class for Zoom to feel and work like an in-person classroom, and to bring back the happiness of school to teachers and students.”
For most of the past 20 years, Chasen has been dedicated to improving lives through education by founding, financing, and scaling education software businesses. Under his leadership, Blackboard grew to a public company of over 3,000 employees, touching the lives of millions of educators and learners around the world.
Built on Zoom. Built for Education.
Zoom has become an extremely popular remote learning platform. Over 100,000 K-12 schools and colleges around the world use Zoom. Since March 2020, Zoom has grown from 10 million to more than 300 million daily meeting participants. Class for Zoom builds on top of the high quality Zoom video, audio, and collaboration capabilities, adding an intuitive and powerful education interface, teaching tools, and additional capabilities for classroom administration requested by teachers across America.
Key Zoom and Prominent Education Investors Fund Class For Zoom Product.
Early prominent investors in Zoom participated in the financing including:
- Santi Subotovsky, a current Zoom board member from Emergence Capital.
- Jim Scheinman of Maven Partners, an early investor in Zoom and the person who is credited with naming the company.
- Bill Tai, an investor with 30 years of venture capital experience and Zoom’s first committed backer.
As well as other leading education and technology leaders including:
- Deborah Quazzo, Partner at GSV Ventures, one of the leading investment funds in education.
- Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund led by Steve Case, co-founder of America Online (AOL), and Chairman and CEO of Revolution.
- Fred Schaufeld, co-founder and Managing Director of SWaN & Legend Venture Partners.
- Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO of DreamBox Learning, and previously President of Blackboard Inc.’s K-12 division.
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“Zoom has become a part of life. We’re excited to have ClassEDU fully leverage and expand the power of Zoom, and even more excited that it’s for such an important use case – education,” said Santi Subotovsky. “Class for Zoom brings a frictionless experience to the online classroom, making teaching and learning delightful.”
“The disruption to education due to COVID is leaving an entire generation of students behind,” said Deborah Quazzo. “Class for Zoom will help Zoom work for teachers and learners alike during COVID and far into the future as home based learning is core to student success.”
“Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund is thrilled to back a D.C-based company that is tackling one of the nation’s biggest problems today,” said Steve Case, Chairman and CEO of Revolution. “The widespread adoption of online learning tools is likely to outlast the COVID-19 pandemic, reshaping education both in and out of the classroom. Teachers will continue to rely on tools like Class for Zoom that promise to make remote learning more enriching and vibrant for students.”
Fills a Major Gap at a Critical Time.
Due to COVID, education has drastically changed as students and teachers shift to online learning models. Teachers need to connect with their students virtually, and students need innovative solutions to complete daily tasks.
“Existing technologies weren’t built to fill every use case and need in remote teaching and learning,” said Lev Gonick, Chief Information Officer at Arizona State University and board member of ClassEDU. “Class for Zoom fills a major pedagogical gap at a critical time, by making the virtual classroom feel and operate more like the traditional classroom.”
Beta Waitlist Now Available To Educators.
Class for Zoom plans to launch later this fall. Interested institutions, schools, and educators can schedule a demo and join the beta waitlist at classforzoom.com.
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