Who says you can’t raise a Series B without a business model? ClassDojo has added $21 million in a new venture funding round led by General Catalyst and joined by GSV Capital, Reach Capital and SignalFire. The San Francisco, CA-based startup has now raised $31.1 million since its founding in 2011.
A graduate of Imagine K12’s first class, ClassDojo’s offerings have expanded beyond its initial classroom management tool, which let teachers award virtual points to students based on their behavior. In recent years, the startup has launched Class Story—an “Instagram for the classroom” that lets teachers and principals share announcements, pictures and videos from school with parents, and a series of animated videos about the “growth mindset.”
All of ClassDojo’s tools have been available for free, and the startup has committed to never charging teachers or selling users' data. Hemant Taneja, Managing Director at General Catalyst, told TechCrunch he doesn’t expect the company to monetize “for another year or so.” Tanjea teases that parents could soon be paying for things like school yearbooks, field trips or lunches through the ClassDojo app.
For now, those ideas are “purely speculation,” Lindsay McKinley, Head of Communications at ClassDojo, tells EdSurge. She says the main focus remains on expanding its footprint. Already the company claims an impressive reach, with teachers in 85,000 U.S. schools—roughly two-thirds of all schools in the country—using its app.
That’s surely a sizable and attractive base of users—and an enticing opportunity for potential business partners. Expect more content distribution in the works. “The growth mindset videos were the first experiment to see what the reaction [from users] would be,” McKinley says. “We’re going to keep looking for other kinds of content to deliver. It could be more videos, or personalized learning content, project-based work...it could be anything.”
