Photo credit Peter Lee, Waterloo Region Record staff
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (May 4, 2016) — Canadian edtech startup Knowledgehook today received Google’s Game Changer Award at the tech giant’s annual Demo Day in Silicon Valley.
Travis Ratnam and James Francis were among the co-founders of 11 new tech companies invited to Silicon Valley to pitch today to a room full of top investors, venture capitalists and judges.
“We’re thrilled and grateful to have shared the stage with so many talented and passionate entrepreneurs,” Travis says. “The support we’ve received today will be pivotal to our mission of helping students all over the world build their math skills.”
Knowledgehook, based in Waterloo, Ont. has developed software that analyzes the academic performance of math students in real-time play to recommend to educators alternative teaching practices.
A popular exam prep tool among the 5,000 teachers in Canada and the United States who use it, Knowledgehook software unpacks students’ misunderstanding and suggests how teachers can address it.
Since September 2015, 12 Ontario school boards have been reviewing predictive insights the software generates for each student to help teachers adapt their lessons for optimal learning.
For example, early results from Knowledgehook suggest that at least 1 in 6 Ontario students in Grade 9 Applied Math are struggling to understand ratios. The finding, which echoes those of Ontario’s 2015 standardized tests, is based on analysis of more than 2,400 anonymized users between September and April 2016, accurate to within 95% confidence, and a margin of error of 2.5%.
“We’re optimistic that the accuracy and timeliness of Knowledgehook’s insights will advance school boards in their efforts to improve students’ academic performance,” Travis says.
To be selected to participate in Google’s annual Demo Day, startups must be legally incorporated and headquartered in the United States, Canada or Mexico and be actively raising a Series A round of between $1- and 4-million.
Knowledgehook was founded in 2014 by Travis Ratnam, Lambo Jayapalan, Arthur Lui and James Francis.
The team is grateful for the support of mentors from Communitech’s Rev and the Accelerator Centres’ AC JumpStartprograms, and, for recent funding delivered by Ontario Centres for Excellence (OCE).