MILKEN FINALISTS: The 2014 Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition (EBPC), one of the oldest and most generous (in terms of funding) opportunities for early stage education companies, has announced the 12 finalists. They'll be pitching in May to get a slice of the $140K pot and a spot in the Education Design Studio, a $2.1 million incubator and seed fund.
Four of the finalists hail from UPenn's backyard in Philly:
- Osmosis: personalized learning platform for medical students
- ProfessorWord: helps students learn vocabulary as they read online
- Scholly: scholarship finder for college and grad school
- SmartyPAL Inc: adaptive learning apps for children ages 3 to 7
California is also well-represented:
- SmartestK12: tool to help teachers manage and grade student assignments
- Totus Power: battery pack to power classroom equipment in the developing world
- UClass: "global lesson exchange" for high quality lessons
The others hail from New York, Maryland, Iowa City, and all the way from Tanzania:
- Branching Minds (New York): Helping teachers and parents identify where students struggle
- eduCanon (Galesville, MD): Tool for building interactive video lessons
- Open Assembly (New York): Collaboration platform for OER materials
- Pear Deck (Iowa City, IA): Platform for building interactive lessons from Google Drive
- Ubongo (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania): Developer of edutainment content for African learners
More details about the competition and the prizes available here.
