Software
ClassTag raises $5 million for contact between parents and teachers.
Vlada Lotkina, ClassTag's founder and CEO, wanted, as did many working parent, to be more interested in pre-school education for her daughter. She recalls a paper note about the upcoming field trip, squashed in a backpack between messy files, requesting smart technology in collaboration between parent teachers.
In the pre-school class, Lotkina went to other parents and noticed common stresses. She also partnered up with a parent fellow, Jason Olim, and launched ClassTag, a online contact network for parent teachers supporting more than 60 languages.
It announced the raising of $5 million in seed funding from the AlleyCorp Group of Investors, the Contour Ventures Group, the Founder Team, John Martinson, the Newark Venture Partners, the Smart Hub and TMT Investments Group. It is said that it has increased in 25,000 schools in the United States to 2 million users.
There are two end users there: parents and teachers. For information on activities, field trips, fundraising, and more, parents can use ClassTag. It is a simple way for teachers to communicate with parents, organize parent-teacher conferences and share resources. Teachers could look at a dashboard for parent involvement to see which families are more active and which may require extra attention or attention.
With ClassTag, parents can get contact through e-mail, SMS, app, web or even paper in their preferred channels without an app. Any announcements or messages are translated into a large number of languages automatically.
By letting educational and family-friendlike companies publish on ClassTag, the business makes profits. Edtech platforms which pump advertising may raise concerns for parents, although it is less controversial because ClassTag is not a child platform. No personal information is shared with advertisers, but aggregated general data is exchanged, including how many users are in different gradations or ZIP codes.
A part of the income from brand income is also spent on supplies for classrooms. This relationship is described by the company as "brands becoming advertisers rather than sponsors."
ClassTag's other objective of ensuring access for any parent regardless of the socio-economic class or schedule is stress-tested as simple as that. The platform Although the digital divide has slightly decreased, less socioeconomic families can fight digital access over their phones. Therefore, a parent working an hour's work may easily be reached via text rather than an email.
ClassDojo, a messaging network for teachers, children and parents, is another tool that aims to digitize classroom messaging. 95% of schools in the United States use Class Dojo.
Lotkina says ClassDojo focuses more on children's behaviour. For example, ClassDojo enables teachers to provide children with points that help parents be alerted to behaviour, and focuses on teaching and administration. In contrast, ClassTag focuses more on disseminating information.
Originally from Ukraine, Lotkina started out in the startup world at the age of 17. She traveled across Western Europe selling a catalog to Ukrainian designers.
She then studied at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, was accepted and came to the US. She says it is easier than in Ukraine to start an enterprise in the US due to investment risk in bank companies prior to profit.
"Beyond this, the Ukrainian and several other countries are clearly facing a great deal of corruption and regulatory pressure. Unfortunately it is not enough to establish a profitable company in countries such as Ukraine to solve a real problem, "said Lotkina in the Medium.
Lotkina has so far chosen, so good, two million users and 5 million dollars in funding later.
