Meet the EdTech Startups at YCombinator’s Summer 2017 Demo Day

I was lucky enough to be invited to Y Combinator’s 25th Demo Day. With 124 companies presenting over the last two days, this is the largest Demo Day in YC’s 12.5 year history. We are proud to work for paragonone.com in our portfolio from W17 and enjoyed hearing from the EdTech teams in S17 about their mission, challenges and how YC helped them ramp up over the last few months.
EdTech is a firm focus of YC and the S17 batch includes five maybe six or even seven education focused teams subject to how you classify ‘EdTech’. It’s on the rise at YC, but like most places — not enough, given the size of the challenges and opportunities in education.

S17 was another reminder of a few themes we are seeing globally right now. Peer to Peer is really gaining traction in Ed – whether it’s teachers sharing lesson plans or students sharing notes, the model is maturing.
Income sharing as a funding mechanism has been around a long time but is now being integrated in new ways. We should focus on reducing total cost of education as a priority but funding choice for students is always a good outcome and ISAs (Income Sharing Agreements) are worth exploring for certain circumstances.
Finally, teaching as a ‘gig’ is not so popular with some institutions and regulators around the world but it’s really finding its place and suits lots of teachers just fine. We are seeing loads of Application Tracking Systems in niche industry verticals and whilst there is a space for now, we expect the ATSs will be forced to mature and pivot as that space crowds out.
Enough high level; here’s a look at every EdTech team that pitched at S17 Demo Day.
Nimble — Data Driven K12 Teacher Hiring

Nimble is on a mission to help school districts find and hire the best educators for their classroom. The team provide a smart applicant tracking tool that seamlessly manages the hiring workflow, while leveraging machine learning to identify the teachers who will perform best and stay the longest. Nimble are sizing the market at $1 billion+ and piloting districts this fall. Awesome team of women in EdTech with loads of energy and fantastic insights. Keep an eye on this team for sure.

Peergrade — Peer to Peer Student Grading and Feedback

Peergrade wants to help teachers save time and teach more effectively by letting students grade each other’s work. When students give feedback anonymously and grade their colleague’s work, they also learn. Meanwhile, teachers have a lot less work and can drastically reduce costs — universities can save on average $13,000 a year by replacing teaching assistants with PeerGrade. Already the company has $150,000 in ARR, but it has a huge market opportunity ahead of it, with more than 100,000 university departments it could go after.
Py — Learn to Code

The rise in bootcamps, courses, and apps that teach coding has introduced programming to a new generation. But, what good is coding education if it’s not practical and not fun? That’s the question the founders of Py ask. Py is an app that teaches skills like app development, building websites, and data science with a focus on programming above all. Founders Derek Lo and Will Murphy created Py because they were frustrated with the existing learning platforms that teach coding. With Py they have created a platform that emphasizes personalization and that, as they say, “makes learning feel like a game instead of a chore.” Instead of leaving learners to try and figure out what they need — and in what order — Py takes a skill-based approach by presenting users with a list of concrete skills they can learn or improve on, complemented by a custom curriculum unique to that individual. Since appearing in the App Store this past June, the app has been downloaded over 100,000 times and rates high among users. The company estimates its total available market is $3 billion.
Lambda School — $0 Comp Sci Synchronous Online Bootcamp until your hired

Lambda School takes the idea of helping learners reach gainful employment and doubles down. Students learn computer science, machine learning, or coding skills but pay nothing in tuition until they secure a job. This is a new take on coding bootcamps that focus on teaching “in-demand skills” but have left some graduates without paid positions. Lambda boasts interactive, synchronous classes that are live streamed from Silicon Valley to all over the world, one-on-one help, real projects, and frequent code reviews to make sure learners are staying on track. Lambda is also exclusive, touting that it only invests in a small number of ambitious individuals. Small may be relative though as Lambda plans to enrol over 1,000 students in the next 12 months. That enrolment, along with the $4.25 million the company has in class now, does signal an appetite for this updated approach to coding education.
Mystery Science — Open and Go Lessons for Kids

Among all the EdTech companies at Y Combinator, Mystery Science was one of the few — if the only — who had an educator as a founder. Mystery Science offers science curriculum that is intended to be “open and go lessons” for K-5 teachers to inspire kids to love science. The premise is that science education today is too focused on facts and memorization, stripping out the heart of science: inquiry. Mystery Science instead puts inquiry and the process of discovery at the center of its video-based curriculum to help children stay curious. The curriculum is hands-on, aligned to standards (Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core), and designed in way that is intended to make it easy for busy teachers to implement. Mystery Science has an ARR of $3.5 million this year and claims on their site to reach hundreds of thousands of children by helping tens of thousands of elementary teachers to teach science. Currently the company is backed by NewSchools, Learn Capital, 500 Startups, and as well as angel investors.
Vanido — Hacking the $1.2b US singing lesson market

In line with the trend of education brought directly to consumers, Vanido offers a way for anyone interested in singing to receive in-the-moment coaching. Users sing directly into a mobile device and the app provides real-time feedback through visual pitch detection technology. Users receive three exercises every day that fall into four categories: agility, foundation, chest voice, and head voice. While the app might fall outside of traditional EdTech, it does embrace some of the biggest trends in education including real-time feedback, interactive technology, and adaptive learning. Vanido engages users by tracking progress, prompting them with goals, and sends reminders if users fall behind their practice schedule. The app also borrows from gamification by grading users’ performances on a three-star scale and awarding experience and level ups. In $1.2 billion market (what US spends on singing lessons each year!), Vanido has had 35,000 people download the app and participate in over 2 million exercises.
Wildfire — real time notifications on campus

Wildfire is a bit of mixture of Yik Yak and Patch, bringing local user-submitted news and administration-sanctioned campus alerts. The app’s initial draw is as a system to send out campus safety warning notification pushes so students are alerted if there’s a safety incident on campus. In the less dire, day-to-day use cases, the app is a “hyperlocal news app” allowing users to share what’s happening on campus whether it’s an extracurricular event or party. Wildfire says it has 23 thousand MAUs across six college campuses and will be available in 50 campuses by the end of the year.
