The Salt Lake City headquartered Ed-tech startup MasteryConnect has raised $5 million from none other than Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, as the two continue to invest money in growing education standards around the valley.
The startup, which caters to over 2 million teachers, is reportedly used in 85 percent of school districts in the United States.
Teachers are using us to measure and see where students are at before and after they teach,
said MasteryConnect CEO Cory Reid.
That way, they can assign the right practice materials or change how they’re teaching.
The startup develops software that helps assess the students through a qualitative measuring system that kicks out the bane of widely followed quantitative assessment system.
Its users are not limited solely to the US, as the software has attracted users from over 170 countries. With this fresh round of investment the company’s has amassed close to $29 million in investments so far.
The company’s app has received a favorable response so far, as it has been downloaded more than 5 million times. Its Ed-tech software costs around $7 for each student per year for a school. But for the teachers, the company has decided to give away the app for free.
“Instead of a credit card payment, we want them to become evangelizers. Roughly 33% of our sales have teachers involved,” says Reid adding that between 50,000 to 60,000 teachers sign up for the service each month.
MasteryConnect has already kick started its vertical expansion with the acquisition of Socrative, a student response system last year.
With the support from Chan, who earlier worked as a teacher, Facebook CEO has been quietly funding into the education sector through his for-profit venture, Zuckerberg Education Ventures.
The duo, who earlier invested a sum of $120 million into Bay Area schools, has backed the software company that designs software to assist teachers in monitoring every student progress through new age devices.
