I’m excited to announce the Kaplan EdTech Accelerator, powered by Techstars this morning. Kaplan will host ten companies focused on education technology and product innovation for an intensive three-month program in New York City this summer. The program will be housed just a few blocks from our Techstars NYC office in the West Village-SoHo neighborhood from June to September 2013. Mentors include Udemy CEO Eren Bali, Kaplan’s CEO Andy Rosen, Treehouse CEO Ryan Carson, General Assembly CEO Jake Schwartz, Benchprep co-founders Ashish Rangnekar and Ujjwal Gupta, Nick Ducoff (Boundless Learning), Brad Feld (Foundry Group), Sree Sreenivasan (Columbia University), Phil Weiser (Former Senior Advisor for Technology and Innovation to the National Economic Council Director at the White House, Dean of CU Law School), Matthew Greenfield (Managing Director of Rethink Education), myself, and many more industry leaders in the edtech space. Companies will receive $20K in seed funding, introductions to angel investors and VCs and access to Kaplan’s extensive network of resources; schools, students, tools, and research.
Kaplan has been a long-time champion of startups and has been very supportive of the Techstars community generally. We’re looking for teams that support ongoing learning, certifications, continuing education, and, in Kaplan’s words, any startup that harnesses the latest learnings from the fields of science, instructional design, and technology to support the development of highly effective, evidence-based learning products. Teams aren’t limited to traditional classroom education nor K-12. We’re looking for teams that are thinking outside of the box on a big scale. Education needs to be schooled.
Details about the program are available at KaplanEdTechAccelerator.com.
