WHIPSMART LEARNING: Undisclosed six-figure seed round to New York-based WhipSmart Learning from an eclectic chorus of angels, including Don Kendall, Emma Bloomberg, Sharon and Judy Wurtzel, E. Scott Beattie, Neal Goff, Charles Bendit, and Howard Chatzinoff. The team is led by two Teach for America alums with serious chops in the education industry: Matthew Gross, founder and CEO, was previously director of the Regents Research Fund in New York and a VP at Pencil. His chief product officer, Dan Cogan-Drew, was most recently the Director of Digital Learning at Achievement First Public Charter Schools, where he's surely reviewed his fair share of edtech tools. This experience should serve them well as they work on Newsela, a K-12 adaptive literacy platform focused on non-fiction content (such as news articles) and Common Core-aligned assessments, to be rolled out this June.
