Online educational startup Knewton has raised $6 million in Series B financing from Bessemer Venture Partners and returning investors, which include VC firms Accel Partners and First Round Capital as well as several angel investors who had participated in the $2.5 million Series A round from May 2008, such as LinkedIn founder and CEO Reid Hoffman and Zenbe co-founder Peter Stern.
The company says it will use the extra capital to better serve both the enterprise market (where it says demand for its adaptive learning engine is growing) and end consumers with its online test preparation services.
When Erick reviewed the service late last year, he wrote:
Adaptive learning tests are taken on computers. The questions get progressively harder or easier depending on each student’s answers. Thus, they adapt to each student’s knowledge and abilities. Knewton is taking the adaptive learning concept and applying it first to online test preparation services.
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The service combines live video chat with an instructor in a whiteboard environment, along with learn-at-your-own-pace sample questions and tutorials. Knewton finds the best teachers it can get and pays them $500 to $800 an hour. In addition to the virtual classroom, Knewton keeps track of each student’s progress in mastering the thousand or so concepts that can be covered in each test. A “concept queue” keeps the students abreast of what concepts they have mastered and which ones they are weak on. They can click on each concept tag to dig deeper.
Read the full review here (it digs pretty deep).
Knewton is such an intriguing company. Using Mechanical Turk to fine-tune its test questions is a great idea, and their charge is a noble one.
I must say, however, that the Knewton “classroom” view looks strikingly similar to an Adobe Connect session. Is it based on that platform in any way?
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They must be fans of Mechanical Turk. They also used Mechanical Turk to try to game the Crunchies nomination process. Really lame.
So they can now buy 60 million votes – sweeeeet!
WooW 6 million that’s great
That’s a lot of funding.. It’s ok as long as it educates people
We are also into developing some adaptive algorithm. Its really cool that some guys are developing application based on this.
Also we are building our own elearning portal that will connect professionals under teaching platform.
Knewton is an inspiring thing.
Congrats Knewton on raising the Series B! It’s great to see innovative players like you in the GMAT market.
Keep up the good work!
Eric Bahn
Founder, Beat The GMAT
Didn’t he also invest in their competitor Grockit? Not sure how that works – conflict of interest anyone?
Congrats to them BTW – I love it and the fact they raised so much money in such a bad economy – pretty impressive. When I did my GRE prep it was really boring and tedious. Can’t wait to see Knewton’s course.
Great news.
As an educator, it’s inspiring to see that there are companies out there trying to bring some innovation into education. I’ve been an advocate of adaptive learning for quite some time, and I must say that it’s always an uphill battle to get people on board with adopting something new. Bureaucracy doesn’t help either…
Congratulations Knewton!
Look forward to seeing some interesting GMAT Products. This field can definitely use an improvement. Good Luck!
GMAT Club
Makes me wish I was born 30 years later…
Makes me wish I was born 30 years earlier…