Presenting Jeremy Friedman – Schoology
Jeremy Friedman is Co-founder and CEO of Schoology. It is a company which offers a collection of features to help teachers enhance their lessons plans, as well as manage their classrooms. It allows educators to host discussions, set up coursework, add videos and interactive media, and track grading and engagement in one spot. In many ways it is an LMS, but with a Facebook feel.
The Schoology platform was originally designed by Jeremy and two others, Ryan Hwang and Tim Trinidad. The three were still undergraduates at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. and had designed it simply for sharing notes with themselves and others. Schoology was released commercially in August 2009 and additional features and functionality continue to be added.
As CEO, Jeremy builds strategic partnerships, directs corporate strategy and ensures the product vision and Schoology platform are operating at optimal levels. Alan Veeck, a venture capitalist who worked with Jeremy as Schoology was starting up comments, “Friedman’s specific experience in the development realm makes him kind of the MacGyver–he can make anything work and has strong sales skills.”(Moran, 2010)
Since founding Schoology in 2009, Jeremy has helped navigate the company through financing rounds and successfully prepare for rapid growth, including the support of more than 20,000 schools and districts. FirstMark Capital, Meakem Becker and Venture Capital have invested millions to allow Friedman to hire engineering talent and further enhance the platform that Friedman admits, “bringseverything into one unified physical platform.” (Colao, 2012)
Amish Jani, Managing Director at FirstMark, observed that, “The team at Schoology brings a tremendous amount of energy and an ability to intuit how the education market is going to evolve.” FirstMark’s involvement in Schoology supplements the firm’s existing education investments in companies like Knewton, StraighterLine and Lumosity.(Colao, 2012)
With millions of potential customers conveniently gathered in one place, it’s not hard to see why education startups may come to view Schoology as an important resource for their applications. E-books, differentiated learning programs, video courses and other upcoming trends in online education easily fit into any ecosystem hosted by the company.“Every day we get more and more excited and more and more motivated,” Friedman says. “It is a tremendous market and it has been neglected for so long.”Moran, 2010)
In regards to his platform looking eerily similar to Facebook, Friedman confessed that when the company launched it was not easy to convince school administrators to use the network, at least superficially, in their classrooms. “Everyone would say ‘we can’t have that in schools,’” he says. After Schoology demonstrated how instructors could use the platform to be more active in the development of students, he won over the naysayers. “Seeing that paradigm shift is encouraging,” he says. (Joao-Pierre, 2012)
Schoology Youtube link – http://youtu.be/uqc1xE2H9Wg
Moran, Gwen (October, 2010). “The Rise of the Virtual Classroom”. Entrepreneur Magazine (Irvine, California). Retrieved Sept 26, 2012.
“LMS with a Social Flair: Schoology”. Technology Chatter. January 12, 2011. Retrieved Sept 25, 2012.
Joao-Pierre, R. S. (2012) Schoology Aims to Make the Honor Roll in Education Technology. Retrieved from http://www.xconomy.com/new-york/2012/04/18/schoology-aims-to-make-the-honor-roll-in-education-technology/2/
Colao, J. J. (2012) With Education At A Tipping Point, Schoology Scores $6 Million In Series B. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/04/16/with-education-at-a-tipping-point-schoology-scores-6-million-in-series-b/
Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
stammik 5:54 pm on September 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Excellent profile Kent. I used this product for a short time a few years back while assessing various LMS and I really liked their approach. What I find most telling about your profile is contained in the final paragraph, namely how reluctant school administrators were to initially adopt the product. I’m sure Jeremy is not the first or last CEO, to face opposition about novel ideas to solve “old school” problems. It emphasis to me, just how hard an edtech entrepreneur must work to champion and sell their ideas in the face of adversity from institutions resistant to change.
Lisa Nevoral 7:45 pm on September 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
To me, this product does have the potential to attract many customers. I like the idea that they have included such things as differentiated learning programs in the system. My only question was why did he make the platform similar to Facebook? Was it to draw people in? And why would people say “we can’t have that in schools”? Some aspects of Facebook could be used for student learning, but I don’t think we have explored that avenue enough.
Lisa
Lisa
Kent Jamieson 1:59 pm on October 4, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hello Lisa, i’m not sure exactly why the Facebook feel is so prevalent in emerging LMS’s like Edmodo and Schoology. It may be just as you said…’to lure people in’. In that same token,however, i think sites like Facebook get a raw deal in education. It comes with such stigmas involving privacy issues and sharing information over the web that not alot of teachers/administrators want to go near it. I have emailed Jeremy Friedman to ask a few questions, but haven’t been able to reach him yet. Thanks for your question, I will make sure to ask it if i ever do get in touch with him. Kent