This article was published on July 3, 2012

Chicago’s BenchPrep takes on $6m to grow its learning marketplace


Chicago’s BenchPrep takes on $6m to grow its learning marketplace

Today BenchPrep announced that it has closed a $6 million round, led by New Enterprise Associates and participated in by Revolution Growth.

On its platform, students can study for any of a variety of content areas. The goal behind BenchPrep is to build a location where any student, on any device, can study for any subject. The company has built a platform that works on any device, making it gadget agnostic.

How is the company performing thus far? According to its formal press release, the platform managed to accrue 100 courses in its library in its first 10 months. That rate of 10 per month sounds a touch anemic, but the company appears confident that it can reach some 500 courses by the end of the year.

BenchPrep doesn’t provide standard ebooks, instead purveying the result of the blending of several content forms into what it describes as an “interactive and personalized course.” BenchPrep, however, is not alone in its quest. The company is working with other firms such as O’Reilly, Sourcebooks, and others to build its content database. Those partners will likely contribute to the rapid expansion of its portfolio.

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As mobile technology has remained fragmented between competing operating systems and app stores, the need for solutions that don’t mind what device they are run on has grown; not all users are on a MacBook Pro and an iPhone, no more than all are on Windows 7 and a Windows Phone device. Mixing and matching is now the norm.

That said, BenchPrep’s 250,000 users are but a sliver of the larger educational market. The company appears to have its eyes on a much larger slice. This money could provide the accelerant that the company has needed to reach the growth levels that would be required to truly disrupt education.

Top Image Credit: ajari

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