Entrepreneur Michael Chasen, co-founder of education technology company Blackboard Inc., has raised $16 million in funding to build a new education technology company, Washington Business Journal has learned.
That funding, from GSV Ventures, Emergence and local venture firm SWaN & Legend, is meant to fund an education technology product that could be used in tandem with the Zoom platform, according to a source familiar with the terms of the deal. Emergence was a big investor in Zoom.
Chasen declined to comment for this article through a spokesperson.
The new company comes as online learning has seen a resurgence during the Covid-19 pandemic, and just months after Chasen — who had largely made his name in the regional and national ed-tech sector — left drone technology company PrecisionHawk in January.
For nearly three years, Chasen had served as CEO of that company, based in Raleigh, North Carolina. PrecisionHawk had raised about $138 million since its founding in 2010, with a new $32 million round in December 2019, according to data from venture analytics firm PitchBook. Chasen departed shortly afterward.
PrecisionHawk is also the subject of a new lawsuit by Terravative LLC and JP Business Group LLC. The suit, filed Aug. 11 in Wake County Superior Court in North Carolina, states that PrecisionHawk did not live up to the terms of a 2015 acquisition agreement, in which the plaintiffs said PrecisionHawk bought Terraserver.com and other assets from them in return for commissions for six years on sales of products and services. Their lawsuit alleges nine counts of breach of contract against PrecisionHawk, including a failure to pay commissions, and for violating North Carolina’s unfair and deceptive trade practices act.
“We have fulfilled our contractual obligations to JP Business Group and look forward to the opportunity to demonstrate that in court,” PrecisionHawk said in a statement about the lawsuit.
As for Chasen, he is most known for his role as president and co-founder of Blackboard, which he helped start in 1997 and took it public in 2004 in a $50.9 million initial public offering. It sold seven years later, in 2011, to private equity group Providence Equity Partners for $1.7 billion. Chasen grew the company to $620 million in pro-forma revenue, as well as 3,000 employees across 21 offices before his departure at the end of 2012.
After Blackboard, Chasen started geolocation company SocialRadar, raising roughly $12.75 million from such venture backers as New Enterprise Associates. After several pivots and the loss of key staff, he sold the startup to Verizon Communications Inc.’s (NYSE: VZ) MapQuest division in late 2016 for an undisclosed amount. A source with knowledge of the deal’s terms had later pegged the price at about $10 million, but Chasen had declined to comment on that figure.
