By
Lora
Kolodny
 |
| Remind Inc. co-founders Brett Kopf, left, and David Kopf/Remind Inc. |
Technology investors and companies
spent years trying to “move tech into the classroom.” Then the smartphone came
along and changed everything, legendary investor John Doerr said.
“While nobody was looking, every kid
walked in the door with all the tech they needed in the form of a smartphone in
their pockets,” said Mr. Doerr, of Kleiner Perkins Caufield &
Byers.
Kleiner
Perkins is now investing in apps that work on the devices students and teachers
are bringing with them to class, and it is leading a $40 million Series C
investment in San Francisco-based Remind, formerly Remind101.
Social+Capital
Partnership and First Round Capital also joined the
financing round.
According
to Chief Executive Brett Kopf, the Remind mobile
apps “make it incredibly easy for teachers to reach students and parents on a
mobile phone.”
Teachers
sign up to use the Remind app, then get and share a code with their students
and the student’s parents.
Teachers
can send messages such as homework and test prep reminders, notes of
encouragement or congratulations, photographs depicting an activity that the
class engaged in that day, quick surveys about a recent school activity or
assignment, and weather or venue updates.
Students
and parents can reply to teachers or athletic coaches only via “structured
data,” not with free-form comments or voicemails of their own. They can check
off a “yes” or “no” answer, or send an RSVP instead.
Because
the messages are all archived within the app and could be accessible by a
school administrator on request, the app is safer as a mode of communication
than ad hoc approaches like exchanging mobile phone numbers, setting up locked
Twitter accounts and lists, or establishing Facebook groups.
At
the start of this school year, Remind was adding 300,000 users a day in the
U.S. and was listed as the top education app in both Apple’s and Google’s U.S.
app stores online, Mr. Kopf said.
The
company plans to use the funding to support user growth in the U.S., with a
number of hires in product development, engineering and its customer service
team, which includes an effort to constantly interview teachers about their
needs and uses of Remind’s technology.
The
company also plans to expand internationally and keep its apps “forever free”
for teachers to use, the CEO said.
Mr.
Doerr said Remind appealed to his firm, among other things, because of its user
growth rates and technology, which “solves a large underserved market need.”
About
one-third of “people on the planet,” including teachers, students and their
parents or guardians, could benefit from the Remind app, he said.
The
company hasn’t yet begun to export its technology beyond the North America, he
said, although about 10% of Remind’s users are based outside of the U.S.
The
Series C funding should give Remind runway to focus on product development and
user growth until at least 2016, Mr. Doerr said, adding that there’s no
hard-and-fast rule about when a tech company must monetize its apps, or roll
out paid, premium services.
He
did suggest at least one way Remind could make money:
“In
a lot of school districts in the U.S., there’s a requirement to have an
emergency notification system for, God forbid, any disasters that might happen
at the school,” he said.
“A taxpayer and school system would pay for something
like Remind, which would get them away from these phone-tree dialers, and is
pretty valuable.”
Write
to Lora Kolodny at lora.kolodny@wsj.com.
Follow her on Twitter at @lorakolodny
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com
No comments:
Post a Comment