Transcend Network

Join us in welcoming 39 founders joining us as Transcend fellows for TF14! 🎉 Miguel Jimenez (Orbit) Josh LEE (Cathoven) Kevin Prokopetz (rellie) Nick Gardner (Ople) Leap Sok (Sala) Laura Wells (AwakeTeams) Luciana Caletti (Sudae Education) Joao Paulo Carvalho (Pico) Benedek Hermán (Voovo) Shiva Jaini (Curiosity Labs) Alissa McDonald (Pop PD) Andrew Salmon(MathTrack) Javier Agüera (Pandora's Way) James Pursey (Replicate Labs) Dima Pukhov (Lala) Mica Vaipan (Run Yourself) Adina Tilek (wedevx) Athena Saldanha (Owler AI) Matheus Fonseca (Leapy) Matthew Plunkett (Project Leo) Grant Wootten (edusfere) Tomás Cifuentes (reqlut) Julia Rivard Dexter, OLY, ICD.D (Shoelace learning) Sophie Vo (Olivya) Melissa Rodriguez(NaviGuide) Arturo Barrera Seminario (Califica) Maxime Coléon (Kuno) Blake Mischley (MeetYourClass) Ethan Pierce (Adaptive Reader) Megan Artin (revision) Mahesh Chikane (The Test Tribe) Tal Rafaeli (Radius) Angela McIver, PhD (Trapezium Math) Chrissybil Boulin (Vero) Alana Heath (HTCTW) Henry Fu ((Factors) Emil Palikot (MoveUp) Gil Perkins, dba Sage Salvo (Words Live) Gannon Schram (MetaFrazo)

6 Transcend Fellows serving institutions of higher education! 15% of our current cohort of edtech founders (TF14) are building companies to serve higher ed stakeholders. These founders are building early-stage solutions to address critical challenges faced by learners, educators and administrators: From professional networking platforms and career navigation services to tools that create customized learning content and AI copilots that support professors with grading. Here are 6 Transcend Fellows and their companies contributing to Higher Ed 👇 Alana Heath - How to Change the World ➡️ an experiential learning enterprise driving educational transformation for a brighter future. Gannon Schram is building MetaFrazo ➡️ AI powered platform for educators to dub and lip-sync their courses into any language Blake Mischley is building MeetYourClass ➡️ p2p platform that drives enrollment for institutions by creating community and identifying at-risk & convertible students. Leap Sok is building SALATECH PTE LTD ➡️ supports learners find college majors, skill training, providing better learning tools and facilitating job matching Luciana Caletti - Sundae Education ➡️ an AI platform where professors can create and grade assessments. Tomás Cifuentes is building Reqlut ➡️ where students, companies, and universities gather, network, and share job opportunities. -- You can learn more about these fellows and our latest cohort by visiting our fellow directory: 👉 https://lnkd.in/gvuFaZMt

Meet Alexander D., a tech leader, co-founder of ClassHook, and Transcend Fellow (TF12)! Alex is a technologist with 10 years of experience as a full-stack software leader. He has a soft spot for making positive social impact through his work and started his career in tech as a self-taught coder! He began his founder journey by first building his own Mario fangame called Super Mario Bros. Online, which gathered a cult-like following. Over the years, he has built tech solutions for companies like Entelo (recruitment tech), MiraclePlus (China-based accelerator - formerly YC China) and was the founding engineer at Zette(digital news platform) where he currently serves as their fractional CTO and Tech Advisor! Alex is currently building ClassHook, a tool that helps K-12 teachers increase student engagement using a curated video library of educational scenes from popular TV shows and movies. ClassHook’s 1-5 minute video clips are organized by academic topics, and aligned to national and state education standards. The platform includes engagement tools that enable classroom discussions, piquing students’ curiosity and helping teachers drive better classroom outcomes! Teachers in over 25,000 schools use ClassHook to introduce new topics in a fun, exciting, and relevant way for students. TV shows and movies have countless references to valuable educational content. Alex is helping streamline the process of finding such teachable moments, ultimately saving teachers time when lesson planning and helping increase student engagement and retention in their classes. Recently, the American Association of School Librarians named ClassHook as a Best Digital Tool for Learning & Teaching 2024! We are super proud to have Alex as a Transcend Fellow and thrilled about the future of ClassHook! 🙌 Learn more about the company here ➡️ ClassHook

Meet 8 Transcend Fellows (TF14) who are transforming K-12 education! 40% of our current cohort of edtech founders (TF14) are building K-12 tools & services. Today we’ll be talking about 8 of them! From district-wide solutions on instructional training and support, to AI copilots that address assessments and teacher burnout, these founders are building early-stage solutions to critical K-12 problems faced by learners & educators today. Here are 8 Transcend Fellows and their companies that are contributing to this space 👇 Ethan Pierce is building Adaptive Reader ➡️ Leveled, multilingual novels designed to make reading enjoyable for students while maintaining student dignity. Angela McIver, PhD is building Trapezium Math ➡️ provides turn-key solutions to school districts for building robust elementary math programs. Nick Gardner is building Ople ➡️ a platform dedicated to P2P professional learning across PK-12 schools. Julia Rivard Dexter, OLY, ICD.D is building Shoelace Learning (builders of Dreamscape) ➡️ helps teachers deliver ELA through mobile games that students love to play! Andrew Salmon is building MathTrack Institute ➡️ a platform that develops math teaching mastery with pathways to certification. Tal Rafaeli - Radius ➡️ customized, high-quality lesson plans and resources delivered in seconds for educators to create impactful lessons Matthew Plunkett building Project Leo ➡️ AI-native platform bridging the workforce development gap for students by personalizing career-connected projects Athena Saldanha - Owler AI ➡️ empowers educators with high-quality, fast, and integrated feedback on student writing. You can learn more about these fellows and our latest cohort by visiting our fellow directory 👉 https://lnkd.in/gvuFaZMt

Meet Abby Coyle, a former teacher, co-founder of ClassBank and a Transcend Fellow (TF8)! Abby began her career as an educator with Breakthrough Collaborative, mentoring middle school students from low-income communities in Central Texas. Later through Teach For America, she served as an Algebra teacher in Hawaii, increasing standardized test scores to 3x the school average and building a safe and positive class culture for hundreds of learners! Abby is also a 2x founder! In 2020 she founded EDvance Tutors, a micro-schooling organization that provided high quality academic support to students and families during the pandemic. Currently she is building ClassBank, a digital platform that teaches financial literacy through hands-on experiences and promotes positive behaviors in K-12 classrooms! Formerly known as ClassEquity, ClassBank allows students to engage with a digital school currency system, learning crucial life skills like budgeting, saving, and financial responsibility. The platform has helped over 200,000 students build social, behavioral, and academic success both inside and outside of the classroom! Abby is helping schools transform how they track student growth and equipping the next generation with the tools & frameworks they need to thrive in an increasingly complex financial world. Recently the team rebranded itself from ClassEquity to ClassBank: “Our new name serves as a clear and visual representation of what we do—provide an online banking system for classroom and school dollars—enabling hands-on financial literacy learning for students while making positive reinforcement easier for teachers and schools.” We are super proud of Abby and excited for the future ClassBank is building! — Learn more about the company's recent rebrand: ➡ https://lnkd.in/duEMypgf Learn more about ClassBank: http://www.classbank.com/

Meet Abhishek Pillai, 2x founder, builder, product leader and a Transcend PMF coach! A Transcend Fellow himself (TF7), Abhi has spent 10 years building tech products in education. He supports early-stage companies as a Fractional CTO and is currently Working on Something New. For the past year, Abhi has been building products with generative AI including Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4 and image, video generation models. Somethings to know about Abhi 👇 ➡ Started his career as a developer at Flatiron School where he helped built features for their software development training programs. ➡ Served as the technical lead and later as senior product manager for Teachers Pay Teachers where his products was used by hundreds of thousands of teachers and brought registrations for 10K schools! ➡ Cofounded Clicked and helped grow the company from $20k to $120k in revenue. ➡ Built an AI-powered, no-code platform called Pico which was used by tens of thousands of users in its lifetime. As PMF coach for our previous cohort (TF13), Abhi helped 5 Transcend fellows run 100 PMF experiments in just a period of 5 weeks! We are super grateful for all Abhi does for our founder community and glad to we get to continue working with him for our upcoming TF14 cohort! Learn more about Abhi here: ➡ Abhishek Pillai

MagicSchool AI, led by Adeel Khan (TF11), has announced its $15M Series A! The leading generative AI tool in K-12 education, Denver-based MagicSchool AI has onboarded over 2 million teachers on its platform in less than a year since its inception! More than 3,000 schools and districts today use its products to plan lessons, write tests, and produce other learning materials. An educator, Teach For America Fellow, and former school leader himself, Adeel began his journey as a founder by building simple AI tools that would have helped him in the classroom. As these tools struck a chord, Adeel helped bring together a fast growing community of educators looking to introduce Gen AI into their workflows. “We’ve always believed that Teachers are Magic, not the AI. An educator who is trusted, empowered, and has great relationships with their students - that’s when magic happens.” Today MagicSchool provides a suite of generative AI tools not just for educators but also students! Their new MagicSchool for Students platform, puts the power of AI in the hands of educators and allow them to build and customize AI tools for their students. Their Series A round was led by Bain Capital Ventures and saw participation from Range Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Common Sense Media, Embedding VC, and several notable experts in education, AI, and the future of work. This funding round follows their pre-seed round raised less than a year ago, in which Transcend Fund invested, alongside many of our trusted LPs and co-investors! MagicSchool hopes to continue addressing big challenges in schools right now for students like supporting language learning, adaptive 1:1 tutoring, differentiating instruction, just-in-time support for students, and more - all with the hope to realize a more engaging education system for students. “With educators at the forefront of this technological change, we have a once in a generation opportunity to transform the educational system for the better. MagicSchool is here to stay - and I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future.” - Adeel Khan We are super proud of Adeel and congratulate the team on this incredible milestone! 🙌 Full article here: ➡ https://lnkd.in/ezXjY7R2

Meet Ioanna Mantzouridou Onasi, a talent leader, cofounder of Dextego, and a Transcend Fellow (TF13)! Ioanna has 6 years of experience as an entrepreneur. Prior to getting into tech, she started a sustainable fashion company to provide job opportunities to the traditional knitting community of women in Greece. Ioanna is a Young Leader Awardee by Education 2.0 Conference, and a Top 100 innovator-entrepreneur at The Top 100 Magazine! She held the role of VP of People and Chief of Staff at Aptivio, a B2B SaaS tool for network sales, where she was hiring and developing global talent. Ioanna also mentors startups at the Zero-to-One Collective from Forum Ventures, Beeloud and has her own genz founder blog where she shares insights to help underrepresented founders accelerate their journeys! As a forward-thinking Gen Z leader, Ioanna firmly believes in the transformative power of technology to unlock the inner brilliance within us all. At Dextego, Ioanna is on a mission to help reps develop relationship selling skills. Dextego’s Autonomous Sales Coaching Platform ingests data from the best sales experts in the world, massing that up with your business's unique knowledge, making it the most accurate, real-time coaching available. So far, the platform has helped businesses increase engagement by 21x, reduce attrition by 50%, and shorten sales cycles by 30%! Ioanna is committed to getting businesses the right coaching at the right time to progress deals faster. Learn more Ioanna's work here here ➡ Dextego

It is the last day to apply for the Transcend Fellowship!! Over 6 weeks, our upcoming TF14 fellows will ⬇ 1️⃣ Run weekly PMF experiments ➡ Founders’ #1 priority should be to find product-market fit at the earliest stages. At Transcend we believe weekly customer-focused experimentation is super necessary for this! Our last cohort, for instance, ran 500 experiments in aggregate over just 5 weeks (yes, we track this)! 2️⃣ Get 1:1 coaching from an exited founder who has experience building in your domain. ➡ To hold you accountable and provide qualified guidance, we match founders with PMF coaches who meet with our fellows every week, help them drive PMF traction and run customer experiments. Here are some of our PMF coaches we announced this week and their domains: K-12 👉 https://lnkd.in/dhsWZ3yB D2C Edtech 👉 https://lnkd.in/dJ4_9_VQ Workforce Ed 👉 https://lnkd.in/d6yG3Z-7 3️⃣ Get matched with successful mentors (founders, angel investors and customers) through our Mentor Jams ➡ Most founders want to run experiments that unlock traction & growth but don’t have the proper guidance to do it. This is why we host Mentor Jams that allow our fellows to interact with our community of industry leaders who bring years of experience building and investing in Edtech! If this all sounds like what you want to be involved doing as the fall term approaches, submit your application today to be a part of our TF14 cohort! 📢 Link to apply ➡ https://lnkd.in/gJqaMgjW We close applications at 11:59 pm PT today 📅

5 Transcend Fellows this year are running companies focused on upskilling and workforce education! From simulated training programs for entry & mid-level managers, to bootcamps focused on digital and AI upskilling, founders globally are building innovative solutions to empower learners & workers with practical pathways to career success. Here are some Transcend Fellows we’ve worked with this year who are addressing workforce education👇 ➡️ Arnobio Morelix - Sirius Education: AI-focused university helping LATAM professionals get global remote jobs ➡️ Martha Belden - CREZCO.io: a solution to train and certify your operational teams via WhatsApp ➡️ Manish Poduval - OpenBootcamp: learn tech skills and become job ready at 1% the cost of most bootcamps. ➡️ James Mallett - Beeline: streamlines the process of creating and running a digital or blended training academy The job market today is evolving faster than ever, not just for new graduates but also seasoned employees with years of experience. Where traditional colleges fall short, low-cost & effective alternatives such as simulated work environments, learning communities, bootcamps or mentorship programs represent a viable alternative for learners. As a founder, it is more important than ever to not just align your programs with in-demand employment skills but also address the career interests of students and workers who are increasingly looking for tangible outcomes. To help founders address such challenges, we match them with David Fu, our go-to Workforce & Upskilling Coach! David has a decade  of experience leading cross-functional teams in product, growth, GTM, edtech, and workforce development. In 2017, he co-founded of Streetlight Schools, a low-cost, innovative charter school network in South Africa. He has led growth for 4.0 Schools, and has helped the African Leadership Group grow their developer bootcamp & talent marketplace by 10X! He also led product development and strategy at Reforge. Today, David serves as a fractional product, growth and BD leader for diverse founder-led organizations like CNA Simulations and Leanlab Education. As PMF coach for 5 TF13 fellows, including Arnobio and Manish, David helped execute 100 customer experiments over 5 weeks! We super glad to continue having David as our PMF coach for the upcoming TF14 cohort and thrilled for our fellows who will get to leverage his depth of experience in the space! — PS: Applications to TF14 close tomorrow! If you are building a workforce education company and wish to work alongside David, apply now to join the Transcend Fellowship and just let us know in the application! Link to apply ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gJqaMgjW If you know any founders in this space that this could be useful for, tag them in the comments below! 👇