We are so excited to finally announce the participants of the second edinno.lab! Meet Spiky.ai, Scoutlier, Polis, T-share, Be A Maker Club, The Literacy Architects, U21, b.e.t.t.e.r. Ednow, a guide to inclusive learning, SMAHT, Mucktracker, Mega Minds, LiteracyTech, Inc., Enlightapp, and UBoundLLC.
The edinno.lab is just that, an active “lab” for early revenue stage edtech startups to experiment with and test their businesses. This application-based, equity-free Lab focuses on helping founders develop product market fit, build relationships in edtech, and answer critical business and education-related questions.
Over the course of the program, the companies hone their product market fit, assess their go to market strategy, and build a plan focused on action and next steps.
In addition to learning sessions and roundtables provided by the Edinno team and RYE Consulting, participants will also have the opportunity to chat with veteran edtech founders, work with program coaches, build their professional edtech networks, help each other solve their biggest challenges, and continue to develop their products.
We’re also thrilled to welcome 5 coaches to the program and continue our mission to empower emerging edtech founders. The coaches, Kim Chapman, Jen Dyck-Sprout, Sarah Fryar, Nick Jenkins, and Kripa Sundar, bring unique and diverse perspectives and experiences in education and include current educators, non profit leaders, and researchers.
See more about getting involved as a participant, supporter, and friend at the end of this post!
Now it’s time to meet our founders
Spiky.ai aims to be the “Google Analytics for online meetings and education” Using data collected from online interactions, we create personality profiles, detect which people have low engagement during a meeting or class and figure out how to fix it.
Through edinno.lab, we hope to achieve our PoC in the US as well as network and establish our names in the ecosystem.
Scoutlier is a solution for colleges, schools and families to prepare students for work by embedding career-inspired experiential learning across grades and subject areas.
Our goal during the edinno.lab is to develop a purposeful marketing strategy to build our user base and expand our network of mentors and advisors to help us refine our business model.
Polis is an online personal education platform that matches adult learners with the world’s best educators for virtual office hours — anytime, anywhere. Through our marketplace design, enhanced virtual meeting space, and human- and data-driven proprietary matching, our platform enables adult learners to find the right educators to answer their pressing questions about their coursework, graduate school, personal development, professional upskilling, and lifelong learning. We make it easier for educators, including academics and professionals with advanced degrees, to create educational impact and financial value with their expertise and experience in conversational formats on our platform.
T-share is a social platform for Spanish-speaking teachers to rock their lessons in Español. We ease the adoption of active and engaging teaching methods while decreasing teacher’s workload, and increasing their job satisfaction with economic rewards.
We believe the edinno.lab will help us get dual-language teachers from the US to engage in the platform, get closer to piloting with one school, and gain product validation.
Be A Maker Club offers on-demand design and 3D printing education. Our key innovations are our pedagogical framework and an automated fabrication platform that provides personalized feedback using time lapse videos. We are on a mission to empower everyone in the world to design and democratize manufacturing.
During the course of the edinno.lab program, we want to gain clarity on market fit and a go-to-market strategy.
The Literacy Architects supports PreK-12 teachers, tutors, and school leaders in implementing evidence-based reading and writing instruction to increase student achievement. We provide weekly grade- and curriculum-specific virtual PD experiences to give ELA teachers a space to share ideas, reflect on instruction, and plan lessons while building a community of peers.
Our goals with Edinno are to refine our messaging and fill our pilot cohorts to get feedback on our model. We’re also excited to grow our network by meeting other founders and experts in the space.
U21 (website under construction) is a platform that connects scaling companies to a pipeline of pre-skilled interns. Our platform helps teams to recruit, screen, and onboard new interns more effectively. Prior to applying for internships, students take U21 micro-courses to help them build the skills necessary to be successful at high-growth trajectory startups. We then match them to paid internships at growing companies that fit their skill sets. U21 has a strong focus on working with students that come from underrepresented backgrounds, and our team strongly believes that all students should have access to paid internships.
During our time in the edinno.Labwe aim to systemize our user recruitment process, bring on a co-founder, and determine the most valuable features to customers by building out a prototype.
b.e.t.t.e.r. Ednow, a guide to inclusive learning (website under construction) aims to promote social and emotional growth by fostering a richer, more inclusive educational experience by teaching about peers with disabilities and/or differences. We believe that introducing the concepts of inclusion and empathy coupled with building a foundational knowledge around differences, and in particular, disabilities, is fundamental in empowering children to embrace their peers without judgement and encourage an open dialogue. Further, research-based evidence indicates that successful inclusion occurs when children are taught about difference at an early age and consistently throughout their lives.
Through the Edinno program, we want to learn more about what makes a startup successful, critical founder skill sets, bumps to expect and how to get around them. We are interested to hear from others that have successfully launched similar businesses and what their journey looks like.
SMAHT uses our own teaching experience and education research to design an online classroom that engages students and supports effective teaching methods including the teacher’s ability to remotely see what students write. We provide an online classroom for K-12 students that supports best teaching practices including ability to see what students write.
Our goal for the lab is to contract with school institutions and get a better understanding of the complete pipeline from sales (getting the LOI) to deployment.
Mucktracker promotes digital media literacy, critical thinking, and research skills, helping students better understand and shape the world around them. Through a dedicated news search tool and instructional resources, students search, sift through, and evaluate authentic, real-time news sources in a learning-centered environment.
Our hope is that through the edinno.lab we can develop a clearer go-to-market strategy that best aligns with our company as we attempt to launch additional successful pilots in the coming school year.
Megaminds is a collaborative learning platform for K-12 that leverages virtual worlds, 3D teaching tools, and powerful presentation capabilities to empower teachers and engage young minds. The platform enhances classroom and online learning through the experiential and collaborative nature of virtual world gameplay. It enables teachers to easily take their existing presentations and place them in interactive 3D worlds to engage students and increase active classroom participation.
Our goals are to continue to develop our product-market fit and refine our research and go-to-market strategy as we enter into our pilot program in the fall.
LiteracyTech, Inc. is focused on innovation and the use of technology to reimagine literacy by redefining what it means to be a successful reader, supporting equity, and empowering all our users in a safe, inclusive community. We are the creators of ReMo.app, a web-based independent reading application for educators and students in grades 4–12. ReMo saves teachers over 10 hours per week on the management of independent reading, provides real-time data that empowers students with their reading, and increases overall reading proficiency scores by 25%.
Through the edinno.lab, we aim to learn how to develop and implement a researched-based pilot leveraging customer discovery and feedback to drive our innovation.
Enlightapp helps teachers build inclusive learning environments by connecting teachers and students in vital and personal ways. Enlight amplifies student voices and showcases their uniqueness — enabling educators to understand, teach, and impact their students in new deep, and quantifiable ways. This new way of connecting creates far more productive learning environments that enable teachers to achieve the impact they crave by uncovering the interests and motivations of all their students. Students also gain SEL skills, confidence, and participate in an environment that fosters community, culture, and identity.
Our goal for edinno.lab is to end with a case study that will be run with a partner school this fall. We want to better understand if the data that we are providing teachers is actually meaningful enough to drive value.
UBoundLLC is the ultimate college visit aid. Set your own criteria, select your schools, capture your impressions and let the app help you make a big decision. The UBound app is designed as the ultimate aide for college-bound students to plan college visits. With UBound, you can capture your experience at each school and view the details — scores, notes and photos — in your dashboard. And invite friends and family to join and share the college visit experience.
Our goal for the edinno.lab is to better understand how we can transition our app concept beyond MVP to grow the number of users of the UBound app as well as gain recognition in the crowded higher education vertical (similar to the Common App).
About Edinno
Edinno is an open learning community created to support and empower emerging edtech innovators.
We’re on a mission to democratize access to information and social capital, making founding an edtech company more accessible to all.
Get Involved
Interested in learning more? Make sure you’ve signed up for Edinno and reach out with questions. Want to get involved as a partner, expert, or supporter? Send us a note.
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