Schoology Closes $6 Million Round Led by FirstMark Capital

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Apr 16, 2012) - Schoology, developer of the leading cloud-based collaborative learning platform for K-20 classrooms, today announced it has closed a new $6 million round of financing led by FirstMark Capital, a leading NYC-based venture capital firm with a history of successful investments in online, software and education businesses, and joined by existing investor Meakem Becker Venture Capital. Schoology has raised $9.3 million in funding to date.

Schoology's mission is to improve communication and collaboration inside and outside of the classroom by socially connecting educators, students and parents to a single platform with the resources they need to drive a better learning experience. Schoology bundles online learning, classroom management and social networking into one, easy-to-use, easy-to-deploy platform that is free to teachers and students. Districts can easily upgrade the platform to benefit from powerful administrative, security and analytics features that can easily integrate with existing systems.

"Schoology is breaking down the classroom walls and has become part of the daily workflow of how teachers engage with students. This is a true, market-disrupting technology and exactly what we look for in our portfolio companies," said Amish Jani, Managing Director at FirstMark Capital. "The platform approach Schoology brings to schools melds together the very best in cloud-based technologies like social networking, content management and collaboration, document sharing and enterprise management systems in one, easy-to-use web-based platform."

Schoology provides teachers and administrators with a full suite of learning management tools to manage lessons and homework assignments; administer and grade tests and quizzes; discover and embed new educational content and resources; share and collaborate with other educators on course materials; analyze individual student and overall classroom performance; and effectively communicate and engage with students in a secure online environment.

Leading schools and districts in the U.S. and abroad have been quick to embrace Schoology. Ann Dunkin, Director of Technology at the Palo Alto Unified School District, representing 11,000 students offered, "We were looking for a learning management system that would provide an open platform for IT, an innovative pathway to incorporate new functionality and an appealing user interface for our users. When I saw Schoology, I knew we had a winner -- our students, staff and parents uniformly love Schoology."

"I have never seen any product be adopted as quickly as Schoology," shared Keith Pomeroy, Director of Technology at Olentangy Local School District, the fastest-growing school district in Ohio with nearly 17,000 students. "Schoology has the lowest barrier to professional development I have ever seen in my 17-year career in educational technology. Most teachers know how to use it without any training. Even the more complex functionality is user-friendly and intuitive."

"Demand for the Schoology platform has surpassed our expectations, exponentially," said Jeremy Friedman, Founder and CEO of Schoology. "Nearly one million teachers and students at more than 18,000 schools and districts use the Schoology platform. This year will bring more exciting innovations as we pioneer and release transformative ways to connect our users to the best, and most relevant, academic content and applications."

About Schoology
New York City-based Schoology is the developer of a K-20 collaborative learning platform that incorporates online learning, classroom management and social networking in one platform. The cloud-based solution is available as both a free, stand-alone product and as a fee-based, integrated enterprise-class solution for schools and districts. Schoology integrates seamlessly with existing school/district technologies to create a single, scalable interface where educators can teach, assess, administer and analyze student progress. Schoology has transformed how educators communicate and collaborate with students, parents and peers. The platform expands the educator's support and resource network by enabling meaningful academic collaboration through the sharing of best practices and digital content via school-to-school networking and an easy-to-access centralized resource library. For more information visit schoology.com or follow the company on Twitter @schoology.

About FirstMark Capital
Based in New York City, FirstMark Capital is an early stage venture capital firm investing in visionary entrepreneurs who are creating new markets with innovative technology solutions or fundamentally changing existing markets by applying a fresh approach or new business model. FirstMark partners early in a company's lifecycle, offering deep industry insight, a broad network of relationships and the operational expertise to build lasting businesses. Select historical investments include Riot Games (Acquired by Tencent); Duck Creek Technologies (Acquired by Accenture); Netgear; Boomi (Acquired by Dell); StubHub (Acquired by eBay); Netegrity (Acquired by CA); OutlookSoft (Acquired by SAP); and Navic Networks (Acquired by Microsoft). Current investments include: Pinterest, Knewton, Aereo, SecondMarket, Shopify, Lot18 and Lumosity. For more information, visit: www.firstmarkcap.com.