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Venture Capital News: Panorama Education Receives $12M

2015-08-04
BOSTON, MA, Panorama Education announced today that it has raised a $12M Series A funding round with participation from Owl Ventures and Spark Capital.
Panorama Education (www.panoramaed.com), used by schools and districts for educators' professional growth and strategic planning, announced today that it has raised a $12M Series A funding round with participation from Owl Ventures and Spark Capital. Jed Smith, Co-Founder and Partner at Owl Ventures, and Andrew Parker, General Partner at Spark Capital, have joined Panorama's board.

Panorama currently serves more than three million students across 40 states. Schools and districts use Panorama to collect feedback through surveys and to analyze their data. Panorama helps teachers, principals, and district leaders understand and take action on key issues, including student engagement, family involvement, school culture, and teacher recruiting and retention. Of America's Top 100 largest school districts, 14 have already adopted Panorama -- unprecedented for a startup -- along with most major charter networks and hundreds of smaller districts across the country.

With this round of funding, Panorama will expand its platform with new data collection and analytics tools for educators in response to demand from client districts across the country and abroad. The company plans to use the funds to grow the Boston-based team, especially in sales, research, engineering, and customer success.

'Since we first founded Panorama as college students, our mission has been helping educators build schools around what really matters. A great education is about more than just test scores. It's about a love of learning, growing confident in your abilities, and developing as a responsible human being,' said Aaron Feuer, Co-Founder and CEO of Panorama Education. 'That's resonated tremendously with schools we've met with all across the country. Over the coming years, you'll see us taking huge steps to empower educators and innovate on what school looks like.'

'Data analytics is going to be a central part of education in the 21st century, and Panorama is clearly the leader,' said Smith of Owl Ventures. 'We see a future where Panorama is a critical presence in every classroom and every school.'

'I believe in Panorama's long-term product vision of using a more data-driven approach to help schools improve their education experience, especially on metrics around social and emotional learning which go deeper than just standardized test scores,' said Andrew Parker of Spark Capital. 'We're really impressed by the quality of the team, and the number of schools who have adopted Panorama in such a short time, and are proud to be partnering with them at such an exciting point in their timeline.'

Prior to the Series A round, Panorama Education participated in Y Combinator and raised $4M funding from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's Startup:Education, Google Ventures, and others. In the past year, the company has begun partnerships with high-profile districts, including the Dallas Independent School District, the San Francisco Unified School District, the Fresno Unified School District, and Seattle Public Schools. In partnership with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Panorama has been releasing open source survey instruments to help schools collect better data.

About Owl Ventures
Owl Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in the world's leading education technology companies. We back entrepreneurs with solutions that seek to meaningfully drive improvement in student achievement. We are laser-focused on the education market and take a hands-on approach in helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses into transformative category leading companies. www.OwlVC.com

About Spark Capital
Spark Capital is a venture capital firm that partners with imaginative entrepreneurs who are driven to move people with the products and experiences they create. We invest in startups that make products and services for consumers as well as business people. We are proud supporters of companies such as 1stdibs, AdMeld, Oculus, Slack, Superpedestrian, Tumblr, Twitter, Warby Parker, and Wayfair. We have offices in the Back Bay in Boston, SoHo in New York City and SoMa in San Francisco. Spark Capital manages five funds with $2B under management.

About Panorama Education
Panorama Education partners with K-12 schools to collect and analyze feedback from teachers, parents and students. Panorama's technology platform helps teachers grow, and schools use Panorama's tools to address issues such as parent involvement, bullying prevention, school safety and student engagement. Panorama currently serves more than three million students. Based in Boston, Mass., the company is backed by Y Combinator, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's Startup:Education, Owl Ventures, Spark Capital, Google Ventures and others. Learn more at www.panoramaed.com.
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