Aceable is graduating to the next level.
The edtech startup's roots are in Austin, and it secured a big chunk of its initial funding from Austin-based venture capital firms. But now Aceable is opening a new chapter on its growth with a new $47 million Series B that's led by a Connecticut firm and is intended to help expand its national footprint.
Aceable, founded in 2014, started with a mobile-based drivers education and defensive driving app. By 2015, its founder and CEO Blake Garrett announced the company had navigated complex laws in other states and was expanding beyond its initial markets in Texas and Florida.
That's around when Silverton Partners, Capital Factory, Floodgate Ventures and NextGen Angels invested in a $4.7 million Seed round. That was followed by a $4 million Series A in 2016 co-led by FloodGate and Silverton.
With that, the company made a series of key hires and expanded its footprint to include California, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Oklahoma. In October, it added Georgia as its latest state-approved drivers ed app.
Drivers education still seems to be the company's primary focus. But Aceable has been expanding into a variety of certifications beyond driving. It launched earlier this year to provide pre-license and continuing education for real estate agents.
Garrett said the new funding will help Aceable expand its catalog of education products to new markets and education verticals.
"This funding will fuel the next inflection point in Aceable's journey," he said in a news release. "This past year we were able to validate that our teaching methodology is head-and-shoulders above the competition."
Aceable was in part born out of Garrett's experimentation with trivia games and training materials in the Capital Factory accelerator. And it grew quickly after finding its niche in drivers education. The company says it now serves more than 550,000 students and 70 percent of the drivers ed market in Texas.
The company has more than 100 employees, including the recent appointment of Eric Seifert as CRO. The only executive position that remains open at Aceable is CFO, a company spokesperson told Inno. Meanwhile, they're hiring for several other positions, including senior controller, recruiter and dev ops engineer.
"With the investment and in 2019, we plan on employing hundreds at our Austin HQ," the spokesperson said.
The company did not provide more specific figures on headcount and revenue.
Dean Nelson and Mike McClure of Sageview Capital will join Aceable's board of directors as part of the new funding.
"The future of required education is online and mobile first, and the Aceable team has done a terrific job building a leading business at the forefront of this revolution," Nelson said in a news release.
