AltSchool Raises $100 Million and Plans to Open More Schools
With its vision of transforming the elementary- and middle-school experience through personalized learning and smart operating systems, AltSchool, a start-up in San Francisco, has attracted top-tier technology investors.
Last year, it raised $33 million from Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as from First Round Capital, John Doerr, Harrison Metal, Jonathan Sackler, Learn Capital and Omidyar Network.
On Monday morning, AltSchool announced that it had raised an additional $100 million from Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Learn Capital and First Round Capital, along with a couple of major philanthropists: a donor-advised fund financed by Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Emerson Collective, an organization founded by Laurene Powell Jobs that makes investments and grants in education and other endeavors, is also an investor.
“One of the most interesting things about this fund-raising round is that we are raising capital not only from very long-term, top-tier V.C.s, but also from philanthropists,” said Max Ventilla, the founder and chief executive of AltSchool. “This kind of philanthropic, mission-driven capital is hugely beneficial to us.”
Mr. Ventilla, a former Google executive, started AltSchool in 2013 with the idea of developing a network of small private schools that would use software to centralize certain administrative and organizational functions, freeing up teachers to spend more time actively engaged with the interests and needs of individual students.
Altschool operates four schools in San Francisco with tuition at around $20,000 annually.
It has 115 employees, including 45 engineers and other technical experts who have developed proprietary software designed to manage the opening of new schools and the student application process. The schools also use a proprietary learning management system that tracks students’ activities and helps teachers personalize their learning.
“There are four primary pillars that compose our operating system and that allow us to deliver this 21st-century education,” Mr. Ventilla said in a phone interview. One is a tool that AltSchool uses to analyze individual students to help administrators decide which students would best fit with a school or in a class. Another is a scheduling system that lets teachers group students by interest and ability rather than by grade level.
“We can bring students together from different classrooms to take highly specific domain classes or extend into extracurricular activities like DJing or programming or photography,” Mr. Ventilla said.
Investors say AltSchool is appealing because it mirrors values like experimentation, innovation and self-expression through making things that are important to Silicon Valley executives and venture capitalists.
“This is the melding of the physical and the virtual in a very technologically informed way,” said Robert J. Hutter, a managing partner at Learn Capital, an AltSchool investor. “The entire experimentation meme itself, that is part of the essence of the company, is a compelling one to parents.”
With the new financing, AltSchool plans to open four more schools this fall, in Brooklyn, Palo Alto, Calif., and two in San Francisco.
Source: NEW YORK TIMES