EDSBY: Toronto, Ontario-based Edsby announced a financing round led by MindAngler Capital, with Byye Management and XDL Capital Group also participating. The company declined to disclose the full amount, although a recent interview with the co-founder and CEO John Myers revealed it is somewhere in the $2 million range. (Scott Welch, VP of Sales and Marketing, adds that the round was "30 percent oversubscribed.)
Founded in April 2010, Edsby helps districts deploy an array of online social learning tools--from gradebooks, attendance trackers, and parent-teacher communication tools to content management and single sign-on integration--within the existing student information system. "The secret sauce," Welch tells EdSurge, "is in the Edsbylink," a bi-directional tool that can take data from the SIS and put it on Edsby and vice versa. Edsbylink helps ensure that the student information is consistently synced across all the district's digital applications.
Edsby sells directly to districts and is transparent about its pricing: one cent per student, teacher, principal, administrator or other staff per day (or $3.65 per year.) The company counts Hillsborough County Public School, one of the ten biggest U.S. districts with over 260 schools, 15,000 students and 194,000 students, as one of its biggest customers.
The company plans to expand its team to 25 people. More information available in the press release.
