Seattle-based GlobalScholar is announcing today a $27 million B Round from existing investors Ignition Partners and Knowledge Universe Education. This is on top of a previously undisclosed $15.5 million A Round the company raised early last year. Board members include Ignition’s Brad Silverberg and former Drugstore.com CEO Peter Neupert.
In conjunction with the investment round, GlobalScholar is also announcing that it has acquired Excelsior Software for an undisclosed amount (although it was less than half the total raised). Excelsior makes student assessment software used by teachers in 1,000 school districts nationwide. GlobalScholar will be adding the Excelsior’s business to its existing Web-based tutoring platform, which it launched quietly last fall.
GlobalScholar is a WebEx for tutors. Parents and students can find pre-screened tutors on GlobalScholar for a variety of subjects and pay for one-time homework help or engage in ongoing tutoring sessions. The sessions occur on GlobalScholar’s Website, which provides an online whiteboard, audio chat, archiving, and billing. (Here is a screencast explaining how it works).
Tutors can charge their own rates—which can range from $5 to $95 an hour—and GlobalScholar takes a 20 percent cut. The first hour is only $1 to encourage people to try out the service, and GlobalScholar is offering $5,000 to the student with the highest SAT score that takes an SAT prep class online. Competitors include SmartThinking, Tutor.com, and TutorVista—the NYT reviews Tutor.com today. Watch out, Kaplan.
In addition to GlobalScholar, the company also launched two other Websites in the past few weeks. SchoolFinder pulls together basic information for elementary and high schools and lets parents compare one school against another. And CollegeFinder does the same for colleges, pulling in rankings from U.S. News & World Report and the Princeton Review. It also lists celebrity alums for each college. (Did you know that Sigourney Weaver and Ted Koppel both went to Stanford?). Parent and student reviews are coming soon.
Here are some screen shots:
(this is going to sound cheesy…but, hey, I have been working for 15 consecutive hours…)
FIRST!
Great idea. Tutoring is big globally.
Talking about tutoring, you might take a look at buddyschool.com – similar idea, but totally open
Interesting. There is another young company founded by a bunch of Princeton University graduates named ePrep.com. They offer a comprehensive online, video-based, SAT course that is also designed to simulate high-priced private tutoring. My kids have tried it and really liked it.
Interesting article about these companies in the NYT yesterday: http://www.nyti...on/31CYBER.html
They offer a comprehensive online, video-based, SAT course that is also designed to simulate
Yoiu missed one of their key board members: Michael Milken (yes…that Michael Milken). He’s now focused in this space and others: http://www.mikemilken.com/
Well good to know about the money they have raised but I am not sure what is new about the concept. We have been doing this on WiZiQ dot com for about a year now and have some decent following among the educators. Here are some of the posts by education technologists about WiZiQ.
http://www.thet...tick.com/?p=574
http://tinyurl.com/23lbgo
I am sure if you WiZiQ you will find a much better virtual classroom experience.
It’s going to be an interesting space to watch in the next year. GlobalScholar is taking one approach. Tutor.com and Tutorvista another. Grockit coming from a different angle. And at eduFire we’re coming at from another angle. Bottom line is that education is a $2 trillion (with a t) market globally and it has seen almost no significant innovation in years. That reeks of opportunity for healthy disruption.
Kudos to the GS guys for pulling in big bucks. Will be fun to watch them spend ‘em!
@TC , Erick Schonfeld
just noticed the typo/error in the url for the tutorvista site.
#3 – SPAM
#4 – Even more blatant spam. Shilling now too huh?
#6 – Spammer for lame site (#4) that can’t even put an entire sentence together
#8 – More spam. No one reads your blog dude.
Harbir, sounds like boohoo jealousy to me. Don’t worry man, I’m sure your company will be able to land some huge b2b deals like the Globalscholar guys. Or um, maybe not.
(ok; this comment is going to sound a bit off, but then again, who am I fooling?)
Thirteenth!!
I have some constructive criticism for Globalscholar; not mere spam like others here.
: Your home page is a mess. Really, it is a mess. It has too much “stuff” and is really hard to read and well, hard to comprehend.
: Whiteboard looks like it covers all the bases. Although it looks like my kid brother designed the UI and hammered it home.
: Great list of subject and grade offers. It looks like you have it all covered and is easy to find that information.
: Your entire site is not W3C compliant or even close. Hire a new web guy.
Kudos to Globalscholar. The education industry is way behind the private sector in terms of innovation and way way behind in terms the way students use the internet (e.g., social networking). We, too, are hard at work to change this. May the best company win!
Robert, I agree education is definately behind the private sector in terms of innovation. A lot of companies currently in education provide really crappy service and that’s why we are trying to build something great at http://edmodo.com (shameless plug).
Online Education is of a prime concern these days. GlobalScholar is a Seattle based company and offers online SAT preparation. But we have lots of Indian websites that helps you prepare for entrance tests like IIT-JEE, AIEE Karnataka, CET and COMEDK and IIT lectures on youtube that too free…then why would anyone prefer globalscholar.com as they have to pay 1$ for one hour.
Disha – education is like healthcare. Price is often a proxy for quality. There will always be free resources but getting an education is quite important and hence the demand for all of these servies.
the sites you mention are not interactive tutoring. rather it is content that can be accessed. if content were the answer, you ca shut down schools and just give students the text book!
I guess raising a lot of money is sufficient to make everyone think this is a great business model. However, a little research should inspire a bit of skepticism. First, this “market-for-tutoring” model has been tried repeatedly in the last decade. This was Tutor.com’s original business model in Internet Boom 1.0 (late ’90’s early ’00’s). It squandered millions in the process before deciding to sell service to public libraries. Now they, and others, are turning back to the consumer market. Second, many companies have tried selling tutoring services directly to consumers in the last decade (including ourselves). It has never worked. Today’s argument is that the growth of high speed access, search-engine marketing, and consumer behavior is sufficient to catalyze the market. While this may be true, I think there is a mismatch between what online tutoring does really well and what consumers are willing to buy directly. Longer post on my (very dated) blog.
http://burck.bl...-conundrum.html
sir,
I am manikandan,working as lecturer in physics dept.i want to become an online tutor for physics.if you have chance me please concider my application.
thank you
Global scholar help me cheat good on homework
Amazing…
So Kal Raman the CEO of Globalscholar is actually working on taking the company IPO in India now. Gee, I wonder what happened to the IPO here… Oh I know, he screwed that off like he screwed off every other endeavor he’s undertaken. All he does at GlobalScholar is hire Yes men who are completely incompetent and dimwitted (usually Indians from his hometown or University in Chennai who know nothing about the needs of America’s highly demanding consumers). Then, he hires truly talented and very competent Americans and places them UNDER his idiotic cronies. Invariably, the smart ones leave. The suckers stay at their slave jobs because they have families to feed and they fall into Kal’s great trap. The man is as crooked as they come. He is a blood slurping SWINE. God bless him. God bless him. God bless Kal.
If only their employees were as good at using toilet paper as they were at technology. Wow, went to a training session there, and it was pretty bad.
The guy that runs this show (Kal) is troubling. He preaches that education will be the salvation of India, and the world.
What he fails to realize is that India’s un-doing isn’t a lack of educational resources, but the lack of a justice system (with laws, courts and contracts) that respect individuals equally.
Kal’s continued shady dealings over here with respect to investor finance and immigration law, and shabby treatment of employees and vendors, undermines the fundamental qualities of the imperfect but present “opportunity system” in this country.
In short: Kal is treating, symptomatically, a disease for which his attitude is the cause. Injustice. How ironic.
The financial backing by a billionaire felon (Milkin), and the hubris of the tech-jockeys over at Ignition provides little in the way of guidance to and control over this true megalomaniac. Nothing about this company is particularly new or interesting technology. The are simply integrating tools, but without the service ethos of marketing resolve to make a lasting business. A house of cards certainly, and the market blows.
Smart employees are bolting, before doing severe and further damage to their resumes.
Globalscholar math tutoring:
Globalscholar employs 60 +/- employees
More than 50 of their employees are Indians
Less than 10 of their employees are not Indians
More than 5 white employees have been forced out
More than 10 white employees have been fired
1 Indian has been forced out
0 Indians have been fired
How do you like that math?
http://onlineph...escription.com/
At least 5 rounds of layoffs and a dozen resignations due to poor management, how long does this company have left in the tank?
I recently got scammed by globalscholar.com. I got a dummy answer to my question (no meaningful content). I paid up front and they made off with my payment. No response from them to my complaint.
That kind of behavior to me says they are near the end.
PS I also let PayPal know about this fraud. They told me they are not going to take action, because I bought a service (as opposed to a physical product).
Oh come on everyone knows globalscholar.com is an online cheating service. Check it their ceo is kal raman who is a major cheater