SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 2, 2015 -- NextLesson, a K-12 developer of personally relevant curriculum™, today announced a $2.9 million convertible note seed financing from leading Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. NextLesson will use these funds to accelerate school district sales nationwide, expand its interactive platform and grow curriculum coverage.
Notable participants in the round include:
Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce
Michael Birch, CEO and Co-Founder of Bebo
Drew Houston, CEO and Co-Founder of Dropbox
Thomas Layton, Executive Chairman of Upwork, Former CEO of OpenTable
Marissa Mayer, CEO and President of Yahoo!
Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO and Co-Founder of Yelp
Nirav Tolia, CEO and Co-Founder of Nextdoor
“Our vision is to make learning relevant by engaging students in real world problem solving through topics they care about,” said Dion Lim, Founder and CEO of NextLesson. “This funding represents a confirmation of NextLesson’s vision and vote of confidence in our long-term strategy.”
Since 2013, NextLesson has focused on engaging students by combining personal relevance, rigor and real world context -- engaging over 2 million students and 50,000 teachers in school districts across the country.
“Education technology arms students with the tools and skills they need to succeed in the real world,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce. "NextLesson has developed an innovative platform for teachers to engage their students at a deeper level.”
NextLesson’s platform also recommends lessons to teachers using relevancy algorithms based on students’ interests. The company recently released InterestID, a free student interest discovery tool which highlights lessons tied to students’ top interests.
“People are always most engaged and effective when their work feels relevant. Students are no different,” said Thomas Layton, Executive Chairman of Upwork. “They want their learning to have significance and meaning to their goals and dreams.”
“Educators have consistently told us their top priorities are engaging students, developing critical thinking and connecting students to the real world. NextLesson is building a comprehensive solution to map the world into the classroom with a personalized curriculum for students, easy standards-based lesson planning for teachers and effective administration tools for school districts,” said Lim.
About NextLesson
NextLesson is a K-12 developer of personally relevant curriculum™ utilized by 2 million students and 50,000 teachers in school districts across the country. NextLesson offers teachers 8,000 standards-aligned projects and lessons that are relevant, rigorous and based on real world scenarios. Founded in 2013, NextLesson was the #1 app in the Edmodo Store in 2013 and 2014, and its Performance Tasks line was named a 2015 REVERE Awards finalist for Supplementary Mathematics Resources. The company is privately held and based in San Francisco, Calif. Learn more at http://www.nextlesson.org.