K-12 Dealmaking: Follett Acquires New Zealand Company; JetLearn Snaps Up SchoolHacks
JetLearn has acquired SchoolHacks, a Silicon Valley-based company founded by an 18-year-old college student.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
SchoolHacks provides virtual hackathons specially designed for school-age children — one of the first competitions of its kind geared toward the younger population of Northern California. These organized events allow students to engage in rapid software engineering in collaborative teams over the course of a few days.
The company was founded in 2017 by Yash Narayan, now a freshman at Stanford University. Narayan’s mother, Ritu Narayan, is also the founder of student transportation company, Zum, and his father is also an entrepreneur.
JetLearn is an Amsterdam-based ed-tech startup that offers students ages 6-16 an interactive 1-to-1 e-learning platform with Web3, coding, and robotics classes.
With the partnership, JetLearn delivered the world’s largest Web3 hackathon accessible to hundreds of young learners last November. Participants from more than 46 countries attended, with judges and speakers coming from top technology companies, as well as Web3 pioneers.
In the coming months, JetLearn also plans to connect its participants to mentors and role models, and to offer internships at Silicon Valley companies.
Narayan will join JetLearn as a strategic adviser with the goal of helping expand operations and the global reach of SchoolHacks.
LinkIt! secures investment from ed-tech investor. LinkIt!, a K-12 software company founded in 2010, has received an investment from Serent Capital.
The investment allows LinkIt! to accelerate its growth plans, including expanding into additional geographic markets and investing further in product development platform integrations.
LinkIt!, which provides data warehousing, analytics, assessment, and MTSS solutions for K-12 schools, represents Serent’s 11th platform investment in the education market.
Serent Capital is a growth-focused firm that invests in technology and tech-enabled services companies.
“The demand for school districts to organize data from multiple sources and make it actionable continues to grow,” said Lance Fenton, partner at Serent Capital. “In today’s post-pandemic, capacity-constrained environment, the need to help districts quickly gain insight, save time, make decisions, and measure outcomes are more important than ever.”
Follett acquires New Zealand company. Follett School Solutions has acquired Access-It Software Ltd., a global library management system provider.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Based in Illinois, Follett School Solutions provides K-12 educational technology services and materials.
Access-It Software is headquartered in New Zealand and serves more than 4,000 customers in more than 45 countries.
“Bringing together a solution leader in North America and one across schools internationally creates an opportunity for innovation that will support educators worldwide with the challenges they face every day,” said Chris Porter, CEO of Follett School Solutions.
Martin Neyland, CEO of Access-It Software, along with co-founder Jo Copland, will continue to operate their business, while working collaboratively with Follett to align the companies.
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See also:
- K-12 Dealmaking: Follett Sells K-12 Software and Content Division to Global Investment Firm
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- What the Retreat From SPACs Means for Education Companies and Investors
- K-12 Dealmaking: Lego Parent Company Acquires BrainPOP; Vulcan Invests in Vietnamese Startup