Here at BostInno, we’ve seen the fickle nature of startups firsthand: One day they can be scoring serious capital and the next, they’re pivoting, shuttering or dealing with legal messes. So when companies tell us they’re expecting massive growth in the coming months, we can’t help but listen with a touch of skepticism.
That said, Panorama Education, a Boston-based venture bringing big data and analytics to school districts, is showing it can walk the walk. In January, the company’s co-founder and CEO Aaron Feuer told us of his high hopes for 2016. Panorama had raised $12 million in Series A funding in 2015 and had big plans for this year.
“We’re going to be focused on expanding the potential of the platform,” Feurer said last winter. “It feels like we’ve covered ground and have it built on a foundational level.... that was just a starting point. We need to take that foundation and 10x everything… I tell the team that we have to be pushing ourselves now that we’ve finished the easy part. This is the hard part. We have to make it matter."
Flash forward to today, and Panorama is well on its way. According to Feuer, Panorama’s headcount has gone from 38 to 61 since then. Currently, its total customer count is at 303, and 38 districts in Massachusetts are using its product. It’s doubled the size of its office in downtown Boston to accommodate the growth, in addition to bringing on two new executives, Daphne Dor-Ner as director of product and Travis Willard as vice president of marketing and sales.
“We’ve added a hundred of those clients and more than doubled over revenue in the past year,” Feuer told us this week. “We’re steering towards larger districts. The biggest piece for us is going after the country’s largest school systems and proving its really the type of product they can jump on and use.”
Recently, Panorama signed New York City as a client. With 1.1 million students, it’s the largest district in U.S. and a major win for the company.
"We’re putting together all of these educational puzzle pieces."
The company has lately expanded the focus of its product, allowing school districts to have more insight into the social and emotional learning of its students. Its product can assess social and emotional skills like tenacity, growth mindset and self-management. Feuer explained, “It’s one of our biggest areas of growth… We’re putting together all of these educational puzzle pieces and letting educators see, ‘What does this child actually need to be successful in life?’”
To finish off the year and transition into 2017, Panorama plans to further expand its engineering and design teams. It will keep a focus on product development, as well as driving sales and marketing.
“We’ve hit that stage where you know you’ve found it, know customers want it and now it’s time to hit the gas,” Feuer said of its product.
