MagicSchool raises $2.4M
A portfolio of tools to help teachers and administrators work smarter and more efficiently
Public Data
Company: MagicSchool
Press Release: EdTech Review
Market (geography): US
Market (industry verticals): K12 Professional Development and SAAS Tools
Customer demographic: K12 teachers and schools
Leadership Team: Adeel Khan
Investors: Range Ventures, GSV, Rethink Education, Charter School Growth Fund, Gary Community Investments, Transcend Fund, Edovate Capital
Business in brief: Denver-based MagicSchool provides a portfolio of tools to help teachers work smarter and more efficiently. The company leveraged AI to rapidly develop and deploy 40+ tools over the past year, including rubric and (standards-aligned) assessment generators, and tools for student support, text leveling, and email responding. Funding from this round will go towards continued product expansion and further commercialization efforts.
Public business data:
10,000 instructor users, including 2K+ users in a Facebook group
Outputs are translatable to 25+ languages
ETCH Assessment
Bull case: One of the best qualities of today’s artificial intelligence tools is a user’s ability to quickly build, test, and iterate new concepts. MagicSchool has leveraged this quality to impressive effect, having built a portfolio of 40+ teacher tools in under a year.
The founder’s classroom and school administration experience is also aligned with this product development approach. What the company lacks in AI experience (see below), it makes up for in experience with all of the little workarounds the company’s target users (i.e. teachers) currently use to support their students.
Additional funding should only increase the velocity with which the company builds, allowing the team to invest further in the clear winners of the portfolio while maintaining niche and/or less useful apps with minimal expense.
Bear case: While MagicSchool’s founder has highly relevant experience for the company’s customer base, the team has < 10 years of experience across the tech and edtech industries, and no formal experience with AI. (Granted, this gap could be addressed with 1-2 great hires.)
The MagicSchool team scaled their user base to over 10K users with minimal funding, but has not yet found a reliable monetization model. It is not clear how much discretionary spending money schools will have as ESSER funds wind down. Teachers are already spending an average of $673 for classroom supplies out of pocket, but investing into this strategy may eventually raise ethical concerns.
In the company’s words:
We wrote this post using the information publicly available to the ETCH team. If you are a member of the MagicSchool leadership team, we welcome your feedback! We will update this post to include any commentary you feel appropriate in this section.
Email matt@etch.club for more information
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