Seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady has invested in D.C. online education startup Class Technologies Inc., which was co-founded last year by Michael Chasen, as part of a new $12.25 million round, the company announced Tuesday.
Other investors include high-profile Salesforce Ventures as well as Sound Ventures and entrepreneur Guy Oseary, the manager of Madonna and U2. This is the latest of several rounds the company has raised in quick succession over the course of the last year, bringing its total funding to $58 million as it seeks to build a Zoom-based platform for remote learning.
"As most parents experienced first-hand, the pandemic highlighted the need for better online teaching and learning technology,” Brady said in a statement, adding he wants to help bring the Class platform to more people.
The money will be used to accelerate the rollout of the company's software. In the seven months since it has launched, Class said more than 7,500 schools, higher education institutions and corporations have reached out to the startup about using its software.
"We fast-tracked the development of Class, which is built on Zoom, because we believe people around the world can't wait for our help," Chasen, co-founder and CEO of Class, said in a statement. "Tom Brady and [Salesforce CEO] Marc Benioff's backing further validates the interest leaders across different industries have [in Class]."
Chasen has been able to gather a group of well-known investors, including Santi Subotovsky, a current Zoom board member from venture firm Emergence Capital, as well as Jim Scheinman and Bill Tai, both early investors in Zoom. Class is also backed locally by SWaN & Legend Venture Partners and Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.
The startup's Zoom-based product is designed to allow teachers to proctor live tests, have one-on-one conversations, take attendance, hand out assignments and all the other tasks that are taken for granted during in-person learning but are infinitely harder online. It's a topic that has taken on greater weight during a period when millions of students across the country are contending with virtual learning set up in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Chasen’s other recent executive stints have veered more from his ed-tech roots with Blackboard Inc. — his geolocation platform startup, SocialRadar, had raised $12.75 million and made several pivots before it sold for $10 million, according to a source close to the deal at the time. He also held a three-year stint as CEO of Raleigh, North Carolina, drone technology company PrecisionHawk Inc.
But he's most known for Blackboard, which he ultimately helped sell to a private equity firm for $1.64 billion in 2011. He insists ClassEDU is not competing with Blackboard, which offers both a learning management system and its Collaborate livestreaming product. He said those Blackboard products compete more directly with Zoom, and he expects school districts to still run Google Classroom or Blackboard products for any asynchronous online learning that's not live.
