A GOBSTOPPER DEAL: San Francisco-based Gobstopper has raised $1.8 million seed round. The round was led by by Relay Ventures. Relay cofounder and managing partner, Kevin Talbot, will join the Gobstopper board.
Earlier investors also continued to support the company including Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings, New Schools Venture Fund and Ed-Mentor LLC. New to this round were Kapor Capital, Sand Hill Angels, and Garnett Ventures.
Gobstopper is a digital reading platform that lets teachers embed their own material--questions, video commentary, quizzes and so on--directly in the text. That way, the platform helps teachers check on how students' understanding of the work is evolving. It works on any browser-enabled device and is free for teachers and students using hundreds of free, public domain books.
Over the summer, 240 teachers and 3,000 students used Gobstopper as their summer reading platform, reading 4,500 books and answering over 40,000 "check point" questions. The product is currently free: materials added by teachers (or that is public domain) will continue to be free. A premium version with data reporting will launch later in the fall for a one-time fee of $1000 and $4-per-student recurring charges.
Gobstopper was founded in 2012 by Jason Singer, a former English teacher, principal and entrepreneur; the company reports it is used in 2,200 schools.
