The story of Boston-based ed-tech startup Quick Key is of the Cinderella variety. Teacher films haphazard introductory video in his living room, video hits the front page of Reddit, app goes viral, then raises nearly $22,000 on Kickstarter before launching to the public. And, come Monday, the team can add a new page to its fairytale.
Quick Key inked an angel investment deal with global education venture fund ARC Capital Development. By the end of 2013, the startup had raised $325,000, yet now has a new, $500,000 round open. Of that, $285,000 has been raised, with an undisclosed amount of help from ARC.
The venture fund has held a spot on the startup's advisory board since September 2013. Quick Key has since graduated from ARC's advisory portfolio to its investment portfolio, however, becoming its only company in the latter category that is pre-revenue.
With Quick Key, educators are able to grade 10 quizzes in 30 seconds. The app transforms teachers' iPhones into optical scanners. Quick Key gathers questions answered in pencil or pen, and then analyzes the results of the quizzes right on the user's device. The data can then be uploaded to educators' electronic grade book.
The idea spawned from Walter Duncan's middle school English class, where he was administering "exit tickets," a daily three- to five-question quiz that tests whether students retained the information taught. Although the quizzes made Duncan a more effective teacher, the process was inefficient — grading 93 tickets every day and transcribing the results was adding an extra eight hours to his already long work week.
"Quick Key is a good way to tally all the data from that day to be able to act on it the next day,” explained Duncan in a previous interview.
By minimizing grading time, Duncan could spend more time deciphering what the data meant and tweak his lesson plans accordingly.
Teachers in 40 nations are now going through the same motions. More than 280,000 quizzes have been scanned using the iPhone app. To bolster that number, the newfound funding will go toward developing iPad and Android versions of Quick Key.
"For our most companies in our advisory portfolio, we help connect them with the right investors in our network," said ARC Founding Partner Rita Ferrandino in a statement. "After eight months advising Quick Key, ARC was happy to add the company to our own highly selective investment portfolio."
Quick Key is growing 33 percent month-over-month, according to CEO Isaac D. Van Wesep. Given the response the team has garnered between its Kickstarter and introductory video, it's no surprise. As one backer noted: "This is going to change the way we do business in the classroom."
And that, in itself, is every teacher's fairytale.
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