Part innovation hub, part college hotspot, Boston is not a surprising place for the edtech subsector to take off. Notable companies like Cengage and Valore Books have paved the way for new entrepreneurs to solve problems that range from grading and note-taking, to making international tuition payments. We’ve rounded up 18 Boston edtech startups that are revolutionizing the classroom today.
Top Boston Edtech Companies to Know
- edX
- Ellevation Education
- Flywire
- Panorama Education
- BetterLesson
- Cognii
- CueThink
- Curriculum Associates
What they do: No two students are exactly the same, and Curriculum Associates embraces this belief. The company has designed the i-Ready platform, which provides a personalized learning path for each student. By leaning on assessments and data, teachers can tailor their instruction to meet the needs of each child.
How it’s changing education: Rather than deliver a blanket curriculum for all kids, teachers can now adjust their instruction to each student’s learning needs. Curriculum Associates’ assessments determine areas for improvement and enable teachers to address these weaknesses with digital courses designed for specific students.
Founded: 1969
What they do: Skillsoft uses digital corporate learning solutions to help companies share institutional knowledge across their teams. The edtech business offers safety training, leadership development and guidance in certification for tech and development departments.
How it's changing education: They're digitizing corporate training and learning.
Founded: 1998
What they do: Ellevation is the only web-based software platform specifically designed for ELL educators and the English learners they serve.
How it’s changing education: Ellevation’s suite of tools help students learn to speak and write English fluently, which is essential to succeed in college and in their careers.
Founded: 2006
Funding: $12.25M in four rounds
What they do: EverTrue for alumni relations is a segmentation and engagement tracking platform that helps users leverage their data and social insights to make a stronger alumni network.
How it’s changing education: Social media efforts translate into fundraising dollars when users can uncover who is interacting with an institution on Facebook and which of an institution’s content is performing best.
Founded: 2010
Funding: $14.57M in four rounds
What they do: Flywire is a leading international payments processor that connects institutions with consumers on over six continents.
How it’s changing education: Flywire has revolutionized how international students can pay for tuition and health care and is now welcomed in 900+ colleges around the world.
Founded: 2009
Funding: $43.2 million
What they do: Panorama Education is a data analytics company for K-12 education that helps school districts, charter networks, and state governments conduct surveys of students, parents, teachers, and staff.
How it’s changing education: Panorama believes that stakeholder surveys can make educator evaluation systems more fair and effective and lead to better educators.
Founded: 2012
Funding: $16M in four rounds
What they do: BetterLesson aggregates and scales the most innovative content and practices from high-performing teachers.
How it’s changing education: The teachers that founded the company are focused on professional development that happens when educators share their curricula.
Founded: 2008
Funding: $11M in three rounds
What they do: Most parents looking for childcare services have to rely on word of mouth or trust reviews on caretaker websites. And when it comes to finding an early childcare provider, the search can be twice as intense. NeighborSchools is trying to make the search easier. Like the Airbnb for early childhood care providers, NeighborSchools helps parents find vetted childcare educators. It also helps educators open child care businesses within their homes by helping them navigate government regulations, marketing and business operations.
Founded: 2018
What they do: Thought Industries is focused on building cutting edge technology with their customer training Platform for those who are driving the future of online learning. Their goal is to help them build, scale and deliver training and behavior change that leads to higher engagement, product proficiency, and customer retention.
Founded: 2014
What they do: Used by colleges, employers and certification providers, Examity’s test administration software helps prevent and detect cheating on exams.
Founded: 2013
What they do: BoardOnTrack is creating a support network for charter school leaders nationwide. Their governance model provides guidance and resources, such as coaching and peer networking, to ensure charter school boards are operating efficiently and properly.
How it's changing education: Because many charter school boards are comprised of volunteers, BoardOnTrack makes the daunting role of running a school possible through training, management tools and guidance.
Founded: 2010
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Boundless allows students and educators to ditch the heavy textbooks and utilize educational resources through a cloud platform chock full of content and learning tools. Through Boundless, educators have over twenty subjects and topics of content to draw their course materials from.
How it’s changing education: Boundless offers institutions, educators and students a cost-effective way to no longer rely on expensive, outdated and restricting textbooks to guide their teaching and learning.
Founded: 2011
Funding: 11.4M
What they do: Cognii develops assessment technology to evaluate essay-type answers for online learning platforms.
How it’s changing education: As the leading provider of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based educational technology for interactive learning and assessment, Cognii engages students in virtual tutoring conversations that guides them toward mastering new competencies.
Founded: 2013
Funding: $18K in one round
What they do: CueThink is a peer-to-peer mobile learning platform for middle and high school students to improve their math problem solving skills.
How it’s changing education: CueThink leverages what students already know and do well (social media, content publishing and gaming) and uses those experiences into the classroom.
Founded: $18K in one round
Funding: 2012
What they do: HSTRY is a digital learning tool that lets teachers, students and historians create and explore interactive timelines.
How it’s changing education: HSTRY’s interactive timelines bring teachers and students learning history into the digital age.
Founded: 2014
Funding: $18K in one round
What they do: Launch Academy is an immersive 10-week software developer boot camp. The course gives aspiring developers an education in everything they need to enter the world of Ruby and JavaScript.
How it’s changing education: The ability to write and think in code is becoming a vital skill across many markets and Launch Academy can mold a junior developer with job ready skills in less than a few months. Not only does the company groom junior web developers, it also offers help streamlining a graduate’s job hunt.
Founded: 2012
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Socrative is a student performance-tracking system that allows teachers to engage students in various activities on computers and mobile devices.
How it’s changing education: In addition to engaging students with activities on their laptops and phones, Socrative tracks student performance and provides real-time data to help teachers, parents, schools and districts personalize and improve learning.
Founded: 2010
Funding: $750K in one round
What they do: uConnect creates custom career service websites for colleges, universities and nonprofit organizations.
How it’s changing education: uConnect was founded based on the idea that too many students do not take advantage of their school's career service resources, so the company helps make a school’s resources more visible and accessible to students.
Founded: 2011
Funding: $38K in two rounds
