San Francisco-based education technology startup Clever has bagged $10.3 million from Sequoia Capital, VentureBeat reported.
The first round of venture financing for the firm that relieves teachers from manually entering data was also participated in Paul Graham, the one who founded Y Combinator, YC President Sam Altman and Deborah Quazzo of GSV Advisors. As part of the deal, Sequoia Capital's Bryan Schreier will be joining the Clever Board of Directors. Proceeds from the round will be used to expand its team of developers and salespeople. There are now 18 employees working for the startup, the report said.
Clever creates products that allow teachers to enroll and monitor the performance of students. For their end, students are able to search online resources from various vendors with just one sign on. Teachers are able to record how students are doing in different classroom. What makes the technology very useful is teachers only need to record student data to the system just once. Because the technology has been very helpful, more than 18,000 schools are using Clever's software, the report said.
In a phone interview with VentureBeat, Clever Founder and Chief Executive Officer Tyler Bosmeny said his firm is one of the "unsexiest" firms ever formed. But it's most likely because of its unsexiness that Clever has gained traction, the report said.
Bosmeny said, "We are solving a real challenge for teachers." He added, "We started this company because we wanted to alleviate a real burden that was falling on teachers and principals to keep all these IT systems up to date by hand."
Clever was a graduate of the 2012 Y Combinator. After finishing the accelerator program, Clever started offering schools its software and began collaborating with online learning developers. Clever's product now integrates with over 100 developers focused on education, such as Amplify, Google and Imagine Learning, the report said.
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