CHI or NYC for startups? MentorMob weighs in on Forbes.com

Windy City vs. Big Apple? Deep dish vs. thin crust? Bulls vs. Knicks?

Add one more point of rivalry for denizens of these two great U.S. cities: "who's best for startup companies," New York's Silicon Alley or Chicago's Silicon Prairie?

Weighing in with their two cents is Chicago-based ed-tech company MentorMob, which recently "graduated" among the first class of the (New York City-based) Kaplan EdTech Accelerator.


As reported by George Deeb on Forbes.com:

MentorMob is a rapidly growing startup in the B2C education technology space.  The company was founded in Chicago in 2010, and was one of the first tenants of Catapult

Cisco's The Network: Verificient Technologies uses data to stop cheating

NYC-based startup Verificient Technologies―an alum of the first Kaplan EdTech Accelerator class―was profiled on the Cisco-sponsored blog, "The Network," for its use of "big data" to thwart online course cheating:

As online schools and courses become more popular, there remains a thorny question: How do you, say, make sure the people who take an exam really are the students they purport to be? Or, at a more traditional school, in a room packed with test-takers monitored by a remote proctor, how do you stop cheating?

Video | Demo Day 09.11.13

Here's the full video of the Kaplan EdTech Accelerator's first Demo Day, which happened September 11th at The IAC Building in New York City.

GigaOM: Degreed 'disrupting the diploma'

GigaOM's Ki Mae Heussner writes about LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman's take on rethinking (and overhauling) education ("we need to apply new technologies to the primary tool of traditional certification, the diploma," says Hoffman),  with a nice shout out for the approach being pursued by Kaplan EdTech Accelerator alum company Degreed:

"But Degreed, a startup launched by a member of the founding team of ed tech company Zinch (which later sold to IPO-bound textbook rental site Chegg), comes closest to matching Hoffman’s vision of technology-driven credentialing. Its slogan (“jailbreaking the degree”) lines right up with Hoffman’s goal of 'disrupting the diploma' and its service is very similar to the design specs he lays out. 

The company, which has raised $900,000 in funding and just graduated from Kaplan’s TechStars-powered ed tech accelerator, gives users an online, updateable and machine-readable repository for tracking all of their learning — from a Harvard education to classes on Coursera or iTunes to educational books and videos. It also aims to score those experiences so that users and employers have a modular way of understanding a person’s collection of skills. Since launching last year, the company says, users have uploaded 1.5 million pieces of credentialing information to the site."

READ Ki Mae's full post "LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman on education: overhaul the degree, not just the instruction," at GigaOM (Sept 16, 2013).

VentureBeat: Live blogging Demo Day

Kaplan CEO Andy Rosen, standing in front of a picture of Stanley Kaplan.( Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat) 

Technology pub VentureBeat was there to cover the action at the Kaplan EdTech Accelerator "Demo Day," held this morning in New York City.  The inaugural class of 10 ed-tech startups "graduated" and presented to group of investors and education influencers.  Read "TechStars-powered Kaplan EdTech Accelerator holds its first demo day in NYC," (Sept 11, 2013) on VentureBeat.

Team Updates|Countdown to Demo Day

Demo Day (Wed Sept 11th) is around the corner and the 10 startups are furiously getting ready to present to funders and education sector influencers.

Let's check in with a few companies' CEOs as they share their experiences with Kaplan EdTech Accelerator.

Flinja | Victor Young

Mentor Mob | Kris Chinosorn

Ranku | Kim Taylor

Verificient Technologies | Tim Dutta

Meet the startups: Degreed

Meet David Blake, CEO of Degreed, a startup that's building a credentialing solution for lifelong learning, which scores and validates a host of different learning inputs.




Degreed is among the 10 companies invited to join the first-ever Kaplan EdTech Accelerator, powered by Techstars.