Tampa edtech startup Scholar Education has closed a $1.5 million friends and family funding round with participation from the region's new generation of entrepreneurs.
Ed Buckley, the CEO of PeerFit at FitOn and board chairman of Scholar Education, led the fundraising alongside investments from a cast of Tampa businesspeople which included Pepin Distributing CEO Tom Pepin, real estate broker Michael Palermo, Red Cell Partners' Naimish Patel and Florida rancher Tom Frost. The round also saw participation from Tampa serial entrepreneurs Aaron White, Patrick Cahill, Reuben Pressman and Garyn Angel.
The new funding will help the startup develop its product and customer base, and the community's rallying behind the startup signals a new evolution in the regional startup ecosystem, Buckley told Tampa Bay Inno.
Scholar Education launched in 2023 under Buckley's leadership and brought in Marlee Strawn as the head of education. Strawn previously served as the first-ever principal at the high school founded by Tampa philanthropist Kiran Patel.
The startup has built a tutoring platform for personalized, artificial intelligence-enabled content for children. Since launching, Scholar Education has performed a pilot program at New Port Richey's Dayspring Academy.
Almost a year after launching, Scholar Education closed the $1.5 million round after a couple of months and a few phone calls, Buckley said. Capital hasn't always been accessible for Tampa startups. When Buckley began pursuing Peerfit in 2010, it was nearly impossible to get early-stage funding. He worked for nearly six years to raise more than $1 million for PeerFit, he said.
"We were able to put together what a few years ago would have been considered a very, very mature round," Buckley said. "But we did it with friends and family. We did it with a handful of entrepreneurs; we did it with a handful of founders. And they backed the people, and they backed the idea in the sector."
Before selling to Los Angeles-based FitOn for an undisclosed amount, Peerfit raised more than $50 million in total fundraising.
White, who recently co-founded a marketing startup, invested in Scholar Education after seeing the company's mission and how Scholar Education partners with Tampa software engineering firm SourceToad and Tampa mixed reality tech firm Vu Technologies.
"When you see certain people start something, you get really excited because you know these people mean business," White said.
Today, the new level of ecosystem maturity also allows for a spectrum of startups and entrepreneurs to succeed, Buckley said.
"Now that the region has had several successful exits, [it] not only has more capital from that, but the appetite and understanding, and being able to fund young ideas at this stage is certainly more prevalent," Buckley said. "... Now you've got a number of founders who can all collectively come together and write checks."
