Quick Key Mobile's fairy tale summer isn't over quite yet. The education technology startup announced Monday it has received $150,000 in convertible debt from advertising company The Educator's Network.
The financing comes on the heels of Quick Key inking an undisclosed angel investment in May from global education venture fund ARC Capital. The news was revered as another chapter in the startup's Cinderella story, which began in February 2013 when Quick Key Co-founder Walter Duncan shot a haphazard introductory video in his living room that hit the front page of Reddit and garnered 300,000 views on YouTube within 48 hours of him hitting publish.
Since, the Cambridge-based company has raised nearly $22,000 on Kickstarter before going live to the public in August 2013. The Quick Key app, available for free in the App Store, gives educators the ability to grade 10 quizzes in 30 seconds by turning their smartphones into optical scanners. The app analyzes the results of the quizzes on the teacher's device, and the data can be uploaded to educators' electronic grade book.
In the near future, according to a Quick Key release, teachers will also have the option of sending quizzes to students' smartphones, as well.
"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, a veteran K-12 teacher, in a previous interview.
What the app allows for is personalized education; teachers can better decipher what a student learned or might need more instruction on. And by minimizing grading time, users can spend more time focusing on students' needs and tweaking their lesson plans accordingly.
"Quick Key's mobile quizzing app is the gateway to a platform that will revolutionize personalized instruction in the classroom," said Hy Schwartz, co-president of The Educator's Network, in a statement. "And the company's vision for software that is accessible to the 99 percent is both a valiant social mission, and good business, too."
Other angel investors assumedly agree, given Quick Key has raised $600,000 in equity and convertible debt since its launch. More than 350,000 quizzes have been scanned with the app, which teachers have publicly praised.
As Adam Cohen, a high school civics teacher in Hollywood, Florida, said in a statement: "[Quick Key] will change the way we do business in the classroom."
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