The 12 Edtech Startups Competing for Village Capital’s Investment

Startups

The 12 Edtech Startups Competing for Village Capital’s Investment

Jun 19, 2017

IT TAKES A VILLAGE—and some capital—to grow an education technology startup. Village Capital, which runs investment competitions across different industry sectors around the world, has announced the 12 companies in its Education: US 2017 cohort. The theme for this year’s group: “US-based startups focused on building skills to help people get hired; validating these skills among employers; or helping current employees get the training they need to reach the next step in their careers,” writes Village Capital’s Head of Education Practice, Marissa Lowman, in a post introducing the companies.

Here are the chosen dozen, from Lowman’s post:

  • Better Weekdays: matches college students with career pathways, while aiming to reduce corporate recruiting costs
  • Caseworx: an interactive video, case-based story training platform for corporate and higher education
  • Cell-Ed: brings essential skills (literacy, language, and job skills) to any adult with a mobile phone
  • Ed Leadership SIMS: provides computer-based simulations as experiential, scalable professional development for K-12 administrators to build resilience, judgement, and decision-making skills
  • Landit: enables companies to invest in and create a compelling women’s experience to attract, develop, and retain high-potential diverse talent
  • Qualified: a platform for assessing engineers
  • Sales2Job Academy: a training, certification, and placement program that prepares motivated students from underserved populations for sales jobs with high earning potential
  • SkillSmart: skills-based platform that aims to improve hiring outcomes while reducing turnover
  • t3 Interactive: trains people to be better speakers by providing automated, real-time feedback on communication skills
  • Unleesh: a mobile skill-building platform that provides continuous workforce development, content services and data-driven insights
  • Upswing International: improves college graduation rates using software that connects online students to on-campus support
  • WorkAmerica: the employment marketplace for community and technical colleges

These entrepreneurs will participate in three four-day workshops across the U.S., after which they will assess each other to determine the two winners that will each get a $75,000 investment from VilCap Investments. Previous winners include Pear Deck, an interactive presentation tool, MPOWER Financing, which provides loans for students at U.S. colleges, and Nepris, which connects classroom students with industry professionals.

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