Philadelphia-based education technology company KickUp has raised $1.75 million in a Series A funding round led by local impact investors SustainVC, Spring Point Partners, and Chicago-based Impact Engine.
The funding round has brought the Old City-based company’s total capital raised to date to nearly $4 million.
KickUp’s Software-as-a-service platform helps school-district administrators better manage faculty professional development programs using data analytics. It believes in professional learning that’s meaningful for every teacher. The startup works with Superintendents, Directors of PD, and District Leaders. Its main goal is to boost faculty engagement and maximize districts’ limited resources.
The startup’s platform works by collecting data from sources like professional development events, in-class observations, teacher surveys and student assessments and uses it to help administrators figure out what works and what doesn’t to better use educators’ time. While KickUp did not disclose how many districts or schools it currently works with, it is reportedly said that the company is serving more than 100,000 teachers in 18 states across the country.
Speaking about the company and what it does, Jeremy Rogoff, Co-Founder and CEO of KickUp, said,
“We’re basically the system of record for school districts when they think about professional growth for teachers. We take that really seriously and continue to mature the product and invest in our mission.”
Rogoff reportedly added saying its work with the St. Louis Special School District over the past two years has helped it go from seeing only about 25% of teachers respond to surveys about professional development programs to about 90%.
Lauding KickUp’s works and commenting on its investment in the company, Tom Balderston, SustainVC’s Managing Partner in Philadelphia, said in a statement,
“We have known about KickUp for a long time. We have been really impressed by the team’s ability to grow their customer base and stay differentiated among other edtech companies. We are proud to support their efforts in providing better decision-making tools for schools to support their educators.”
Rogoff is reported to have said that the latest investment will enable the company to bring in more engineers and sales and marketing staff, and hopes to expand the current team of the company up to 35 employees by September next year. After raising a $1.5 million seed round in 2016 and a $730,000 post-seed round in 2017, KickUp has grown to a staff of 23.
