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Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The Pitch
Engaged Minds makes software to help keep students in school
By Lynette F. Cornell
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Engaged Minds Inc.
Headquarters: Roslindale
URL: www.engagedmindsinc.com
Email: christoph.knoess@engagedmindsinc.com
Phone: 617-899-6947
Employees: 3
Year founded: 2007
The Pitch: $500,000
In the company’s own words: “Engaged Minds provides a SaaS solution to education institutions (school districts and colleges/universities). The solution reduces student drop-outs by automating all steps from identifying at-risk students, triggering support interventions, completion tracking and outcome measurement. The solution is in production and proven to be effective. The solution leads to immediate revenue gains far in excess of its cost.”
Background: Engaged Minds was founded in 2007. By the middle of 2009, the company had completed a hosted solution that they sold to launch customers in higher education. They showed the product to people at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who urged them to provide the same service to K-12 districts. They are currently in discussions with school districts to launch the product in the K-12 market for the coming academic year.
How it works: Schools pay a subscription fee to use the software, which automates the process of identifying at-risk students based on district-defined thresholds, alerts the person responsible for responding to the issue and tracks each completed intervention and ensures that deadlines have been met. The software integrates with existing student information systems and creates longitudinal records to track students as they transition between grades.
The people behind the company: The company was founded by Christoph Knoess, who serves as CFO. Before starting Engaged Minds, he was senior vice president of sales, marketing and strategy at Boston-based Jenzabar Inc., a software company that provides higher education institutions with administrative software.
Co-founder Joel White is the company’s CTO. Formerly, White was a founder of Cogniscent Inc., a North Grafton-based manufacturer of odor detection devices to detect, identify and discriminate airborne compounds.
Vivek Pandit is vice president of business development. His experience includes his role as vice president of strategy and business development of Family Education Network.
The Market: The company sees a $1.3 billion market for retention solutions.
The Competiton: Their direct competitors are other startups with similar solutions, including Starfish Retention Solutions Inc., GradesFirst and EducationDynamics LLC. The Engaged Minds software works differently from the products these companies offer in that the Engaged Minds software was designed for senior administrators, as opposed to faculty or students. With this system, the top administrative officials determine the faculty’s participation, roles and responsbilities, where as other software relies on faculty to opt in.
According to Knoess, the company’s indirect competitors are established IT vendors serving higher education institutions, such as Oracle/Peoplesoft, Sungard, Datatel and Hobsons, which are adding some retention functionality to their transaction systems. The underlying transaction systems of these competitors are too rigid, said Knoess.
Engaged Minds’ Pitch: They are seeking $500,000 to fund a marketing program and develop a repeatable client acquisition process. They are also seeking networking opportunities with players in the education market.
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