As Kids’ Media Use Increases, Will Ed-Tech Investment Follow?
A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, with 8- to 18-year olds devoting an average of seven hours and 38 minutes a day to media use. And because they spend so much of that time “media multi-tasking,” young people actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into those 7½ hours. With this key role that media plays in children’s lives, it is crucial to support the creation of innovative educational technologies that can be used for teaching and learning. Sponsor Are you the parent of a child 12 years old or under? Click here to take a survey about how kids perceive the Web. With this in mind the Venture Capital in Education Summit 2010 will be held in New York City on June 8 and 9. The summit examines some of the key trends in education technology and showcases some of the leading-edge ed-tech entrepreneurs and investors. Keynotes speakers include industry, education and government experts, along with investors. The recent National Education Technology Plan (NETP) indicates the Obama Administration’s support for a number of key technologies, including open-source software, virtual worlds and cloud computing. But funding for these recommendations remains uncertain. The Venture Capital in Education Summit is “designed for the innovators in the K-20 education markets, and those committed to providing the capital and resources to support these change agents.” The difference between consumer technology markets and school technology markets are important, and the summit seeks to share this and other insights into developing and marketing to the education sector. The announcement yesterday that Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings and the non-profit venture capital firm Charter Fund had acquired math-game company DreamBox Learning , and the announcement last week that language learning company Babbel had its first profitable quarter (notably after abandoning the freemium model ) point to education technology as a promising area for tech startups. As ed-tech blogger Kirsten Winkler says , “People are willing to pay for well developed educational products.” Discuss
Volcanoes, Boot Camps, and Other Opportunities for European Startups
The grounding of flights in and out of European as a result of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull has been a powerful reminder of how much of our global economy relies on air transportation. As we wrote yesterday , the volcanic ash not only impacted the airline industry, but the tech world as well, disrupting business and conference travel alongside product deliveries. European startups, particularly reliant on quick transportation from country-to-country, may be feeling the consequences of restrictions on air travel even more so. Mike Butcher argues in a Techcrunch Europe article , “It seems that Europe’s startup economy has been running partly on the spread low-cost airlines for the past 5 years, and without airlines the startups, along with the whole of the general business sector, are going to be badly affected.” Sponsor It’s unclear how much the volcanic eruption will further challenge business development, or if it will spur innovation and opportunities, particularly around virtual conferencing and alternative transportation planners. Jame Andrews, co-founder of Loco2 , a site promoting sustainable travel, remarks, “Thanks Iceland volcano for helping us to prove the market for alternatives to flying!” Jacek Kelski, founder and director of f3fundit , a blog and business portal aimed at helping support European entrepreneurs, argues that the major hindrance in Europe remains “investor readiness.” According to Kelski “there are definitely a lot of good ambitious companies out there. There is a lot of activity all over the continent.” But while there seems to be a lot of startup activity, Kelski is less optimistic about investor activity. “We’re seeing very little if any VC activity in Europe at the moment, and the majority of funding is coming from angels and larger corporates.” To help, f3fundit are holding a “Next Top Startup” competition. Ten finalists will take part in a boot camp June 16 and 17 in Barcelona, Spain, where they will work closely with a team of 25 mentors. One of the companies will be crowned the “Next Top Startup” and win a €25,000 prize. Kelsi hopes f3fundit.com’s competition can help provide both the cash and the support for some of the startup community. Hopefully, European volcanic activity will cooperate. Discuss
Columbia and IBM Launch Green Tech Skills Initiative
Figures released in February suggested that VC investment in cleantech startups, particularly those focused on energy efficiency, was on the rise. To help prepare college students for jobs in this emerging green economy, Columbia University and IBM are announcing the launch of the Smarter Cities Skills Initiative. Sponsor The Smarter Cities Initiatives opens IBM’s global resources to Columbia faculty and students, including access to the 40 IBM Innovation Centers worldwide. The intiative builds upon Columbia’s existing research efforts on sustainability issues, spanning several academic disciplines including business, law and engineering. The initiative will provide students with free access to: IBM software, both on campus and in the cloud, to develop software for sustainability and green projects Technical support for green technology courses that show students how to build energy efficient IT infrastructure for smart buildings, smart grids and smart water systems Energy efficiency and open standards software development tools on IBM developerWorks 100,000 global business partners and academic communities through 40 IBM Innovation Centers in 30 countries “Smart urban infrastructures are key to long term environmental and economic sustainability,” said Rich Lechner, vice president, IBM Energy and Environment. “IBM and Columbia share a common goal to ensure the next generation of entrepreneurs have access to the skills they need to accelerate sustainability projects and to be competitive when they enter the workforce.” Lechner says the necessary skills for being successful in the emerging green economy include technical skills, particularly in the areas of data analytics, visualizations and security, understanding of business processes, and the historical and policy-based knowledge that can help transform industries like the energy sector. In recognition of Earth Day, the initiative will be announced on Thursday at Columbia University to faculty, students, venture capitalists, policy analysts, and industry leaders at the first annual Smarter Students for a Smarter Planet forum. More than 150 schools around the world are expected to participate via webcast. The forum will explore the skills necessary to prepare students for green jobs, and help academia and industry jumpstart a global collaboration toward developing sustainable technologies and a green economy. Discuss
TechStars Grad SendGrid Collects $5M Series A Financing Round
It was announced Tuesday that email management startup SendGrid had raised $5 million in Series A financing from a handful of prominent investors, including Foundry Group , Highway 12 Ventures , Dave McClure , David Cohen and Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg . SendGrid, a graduate of last year’s summer TechStars program, launched last fall and raised some seed funding from many of the same investors on its way to sending nearly 1.2 billion emails for its over 4,000 clients. Sponsor SendGrid is a cloud-based service that helps companies, big and small, manage automatic transactional emails sent to its users while also providing analytics and delivery assurance. A demo plan gives companies 200 free emails per month, and after that monthly prices range from $10 for 10,000 emails, to $800 for 500,000 emails, along with a few other premium features. More interestingly, the company managed a solid Series A round after strong customer development and acquisition without the blitz of marketing tactics we see from a lot of young startups. Sure it’s important to spread the word about your product, but in other cases, letting your product speak for itself through customer referrals can play a large part of product growth. Ryan McIntyre of Foundry Group mentored Isaac Saldana, SendGrid’s co-founder and CEO, during the TechStars program last summer and spearheaded Foundry Group’s efforts to lead the investment round. Tuesday morning, McIntyre offered a look into the SendGrid investment , which he says fits with Foundry Group’s theme of protocol investments. “As we observed SendGrid’s rapid customer growth, which has occurred through word of mouth and without formal sales or marketing efforts, we made an offer to invest in SendGrid, and, thankfully, they accepted our offer to lead this round,” writes McIntyre. Being a graduate of TechStars has been an obvious benefit to SendGrid. Dave McClure and David Cohen have participated in both the seed and Series A rounds of financing, and some of the programs other graduates ( SnapABug and Next Big Sound ) are users of the service. Other more prominent companies have started using the service as well, including Plancast , HootSuite , Get Satisfaction , SlideShare and Foursquare , all helping to spread the word about the service. Not only is SendGrid providing an excellent service that many startups could take advantage of, but they also serve as an example to other early-stage companies out there looking for funding. First, they are a shining example of the opportunities that come from participating in startup incubators like TechStars, as some of their investors and customers have come from the program. And secondly, SendGrid’s focus on steady customer acquisition and development, instead of on viral marketing, is a valuable lesson. Last Friday we mentioned a book called The Referral Engine which helps companies focus their business strategies to drive customer referrals, and it seems SendGrid has done this well, growing their customer base without traditional marketing blasts. Discuss
Visualize Big Data with Flowing Media
As a recent article in The Economist observed, we are at the point of an “industrial revolution of data,” with vast amounts of digital information being created, stored and analyzed. The rise of “big data” has led in turn to an increased demand for tools to both analyze and visualize the information. This bodes well for startups tackling the field. One new service is Flowing Media , the new company of Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, a consultancy focused on data visualization services. Sponsor Prior to founding Flowing Media, Viégas and Wattenberg worked for IBM’s Visual Communications Lab . Their Many Eyes project was one of the first to put visualization tools in the hands of the public, with the goal of democratizing visualization and the accompanying social analysis. According to Viégas and Wattenberg, visualization is a powerful analytical tool for experts and non-experts. “It’s an excellent way to attract non-geeks to complex data and can spark conversation.” They note that a good visualization can easily go viral on the Web, touching millions of people. As “big data” becomes more accessible, visualization services like Flowing Media are sure to flourish. After all, as Viégas and Wattenberg note, “Today many facets of life are made of nothing but data, from flirting on Facebook to photos on Flickr.” Image credits: Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, top: Wired Magazine – “A visualization of thousands of Wikipedia edits that were made by a single software bot. Each color corresponds to a different page.” and bottom: Flickr Flow , the colors in photos uploaded to Flickr. Discuss