We are on week five of Profiles and Founders: Where Are They Now? As I mentioned in Parts I, II, III and IV, I’ve been contributing to Forbes for two and half years and have had the opportunity to profile great companies and interview some interesting founders. Every once in a while a reader follows up via email asking how a company is doing. I thought it would be neat to do a “where are they now?” series to check in on all the companies profiled in my column. This is the fifth of seven weeks of five company catch-ups. This week we check in with Skillshare, Nakoo, Popcorn, Krossover, and NoRedInk.
Skillshare
On March 29, 2012, I wrote about a New York-based startup called Skillshare. Since I spoke with founder, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, almost two years ago, Skillshare has made huge strides towards its mission to offer universal access to high-quality learning. Today, they offer unlimited access to hundreds of online classes for just $10 a month. Every class is built on the belief that learning by doing is the best way to learn, with short video lessons and hands-on projects to put ideas into action.
The philosophy behind the service is that anyone can be a teacher, and have an open submission policy for project-based classes at Skillshare.com/teach. In addition to subject experts from all backgrounds, industry icons like James Franco, Seth Godin, Paula Scher, Guy Kawasaki, Young Guru, and Susan Orlean teach classes at Skillshare.
At its heart, Skillshare is an online learning community, and their product team has built a layer of community tools to enhance the platform. Students share projects, exchange feedback, get inspired, and make connections, all within the platform. More than 180,000 students from 188 countries have taken online classes at Skillshare.
Nakoo
On October 31, 2013, I wrote about a startup called Nakoo. Nakoo is a combo of Kiva and Kickstarter, allowing for crowd granting higher education. Since writing about them, Nakoo launched a new “corporate scholarships” feature that connects students with employers, contributes to education expenses, and helps guide students’ coursework. The first round of scholarship checks were sent out to universities. The one challenge Nakoo continues to face is that the idea of crowdfunding higher education has yet to gain popular awareness outside of niche circles. Interestingly, a significant number of their new users are coming from international students.
Popcorn
On November 14, 2013, I wrote about a sleek product called Popcorn. Popcorn’s concept was very basic, a chat room in a 1 mile radius from where you are. The article was about how Popcorn got its first thousand users. I reconnected with the creator, Ryan Friedman. He shared that it was a tough decision but he stopped working on Popcorn two months ago to pursue another project.
He has been coding the project but it doesn’t have a name yet. He told me that it is a self-serve marketplace for Instagrammers and brands to connect for endorsement-based advertising. He said: “Right now, there's not a lot of efficiency in connecting these two parties, particularly on the discovery and transaction side. There's also an opportunity to make ads on social media more engaging through the endorsement model.”
Krossover
On December 5, 2013, I wrote about a startup called Krossover, a company building the
The Krossover team has now grown to over 55 members in NYC, with a network of several thousand sports analysts who help them break down the games. In addition, Krossover raised $9M in Series B funding this year, bringing the total raised to $15M in funding, entirely from East Coast angel investors. They are hiring for multiple positions in NYC.
NoRedInk
On December 19, 2013, I wrote about a startup called NoRedInk, an adaptive learning engine helping students improve their grammar and writing skills. Since writing about them students have answered a whopping 100 million questions on the site. NoRedInk has tripled its number of categories since December, analyzing over 1,500 student misconceptions while its questions and interfaces adjust to learners' strengths and weaknesses. Students are mastering more advanced concepts on the site, learning how to write with parallel structure, practicing their verb tense skills, conquering the nuances of MLA citation, identifying vague pronouns, and exploring different methods of transitioning into quotations. All of this happens via hilarious sentences about Bruno Mars, LeBron James, the Hunger Games, X-Men, and hundreds of other celebrities and interests that users select.
Thousands of schools have applied to buy the new Premium version, which is in limited release this fall, and the site continues to be one of the highest ranked apps in the Edmodo store. The team has grown, filled with various Ivy League talent, veteran Silicon Valley engineers, and former educators with a passion for language. Their mission is the same: eliminating the "red ink" on students' papers. Educators can still create free accounts on NoRedInk.com.
