Panorama Education raises $16M to leverage data for student achievement
Panorama Education wants to help schools better understand their students, and with a fresh $16 million Series B round led by Emerson Collective, the edtech startup is well on its way to do just that. Panorama Education offers elementary, middle and high school students and teachers surveys that assess their social skills, emotional development and family engagement. The new Series B round will be used for product development and customer acquisition, growing the number of Panorama employees who travel around the country and meet with school principals to showcase the company’s products. [Built In Boston]
Raizlabs gets acquired by Chicago’s Rightpoint
Boston-based mobile app development firm Raizlabs is getting acquired by Chicago-based customer experience agency Rightpoint. Raizlabs founder and CEO George Raiz will join Rightpoint’s leadership team as chief innovation officer, and will remain in Boston. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. [BostInno]
ThirdChannel raises $7M in funding to give brick-and-mortar retailers a leg up
As technology continues to shape consumer shopping behavior, brick-and-mortar stores have struggled to keep up with e-commerce. ThirdChannel, a Cambridge-based startup offering a retail intelligence platform, hopes to give brick-and-mortar stores an advantage. The startup, which offers retailers an intelligence platform that shows stores all the behavioral and operational data points needed to make critical business decisions, just raised a fresh $7 million Series A round to make that happen. Led by Fung Capital, the round will be used to expand ThirdChannel’s engineering and analytics capabilities to meet more complex customer needs across a growing number of retail verticals. [Built In Boston]
Residents of Boston can now use Amazon Key
Residents of Boston are now able to use Amazon Key, a new service for Prime members that enables in-home delivery and secure home access for guests, like house cleaners, dog walkers or friends. Amazon Key’s mission is to improve the convenience of receiving deliveries and granting secure home access for guests. How does it work? Each time a delivery driver requests access to a customer’s home, Amazon verifies that the correct driver is at the right address at the intended time through an encrypted authentication process. Then, Amazon Cloud Cam starts recording and the customer’s door is unlocked. [Press Release]
Mindtrek to open second virtual reality game arena in Mass.
Mindtrek VR, a warehouse-scale multi-player virtual reality gaming arena, is slated to open its second location in Marlborough over the next two months. The first Mindtrek arena opened in Woburn in May, offering a high-tech, free roam VR gaming center for players. The arenas will be powered by Zero Latency, a Melbourne, Australia-based tech company that is the global leader in VR gaming. Zero Latency’s motion tracking system allows large groups wearing virtual reality gear to interact and participate simultaneously in digital games — from fighting zombies and aliens to “Jurassic Park”-style dinosaur adventures. [Press Release]
