In 2021, we set out on a mission to help edtech developers and companies build and scale their applications. Today, we mark a significant milestone as we announce an investment round of $1.35M. Our investors, who share our passion for advancing learning through technology, will enable us to better support edtech providers of any size or growth stage to overcome their trickiest edtech stack challenges.
In 2008 we founded Mastery Connect, a K-12 assessment platform, which was acquired by Instructure, the makers of Canvas, in 2019. Designed to efficiently track student mastery of learning standards, we built Mastery Connect to make a lasting difference in education. Our co-founder was a lifetime educator, and we grew up in families full of educators (two of us even married teachers). So we were committed to making teachers’ lives easier and learning more impactful. We were lucky to build a team of equally passionate people, and we soon had district partners across the country.
As serial entrepreneurs, we wanted to build quickly, but we soon faced the primary challenge of successfully developing, scaling, and maintaining edtech software for K-12: rostering and interoperability. These roadblocks required us to divert time and resources to build extensive internal infrastructure and middleware tools.
Looking for a more scalable solution, we were the first to integrate with third-party data-exchanges, but found ourselves trapped: we were on a frustrating treadmill of chasing the next technology and nuance of a district implementation…and footing the bill each time. Despite a substantial investment in these internal tools, we ended up with a black-box of systems with limited data observability, automation, and interoperability. Our top–and highest paid–engineers were continually bogged down with rostering escalations and district integrations, which meant fewer dev hours spent on building really cool, innovative stuff for the classroom.
As we talked with other edtech developers, we found we were all trying to solve for these “middleware” pieces, a completely unique development challenge in the edtech space. We also found no one had good answers to overcoming the deceivingly complex and expensive obstacles. So we carried on, dedicating countless development hours–and millions of dollars–to the problem, time and money that could’ve been better spent focusing on our core business.
It was this decade-long struggle that led to the inception and launch of Ednition and our platform, RosterStream. RosterStream puts rostering, observability, automation, and interoperability on cruise control. Unlike existing rostering and interoperability solutions, we prioritize solving vendor infrastructure needs rather than focusing on school and district tools. This eliminates costly vendor-side work, like SSO and LTI setup, bypasses the tolls of dated data exchange services, and allows applications to integrate with any SIS or third-party data provider. This means RosterStream users are able to connect with and support the smallest schools to the largest districts.
In short, Ednition was designed from the start to be infrastructure-as-as-service specifically for k-12 edtech providers. And our commitment to delivering holistic data is shown in recent releases, including our Extended Data Domains feature, which reaches beyond core rostering and includes data domains such as: attendance, discipline, assessment, school calendar, intervention, and more. These updates come on the heels of new migration tools and services designed to help partners transition smoothly from paid data exchange services to direct-to-district connections.
As we look to the future, companies are grappling with how to meaningfully integrate AI-powered solutions into their products. We believe that seamless data flow in the edtech ecosystem is a precondition for AI to move from experimental and theoretical to truly transformational in the space. Unlocking data flows empowers edtech to harness AI’s power and actualize whole-child, learner-centered education.
We’re grateful to be in good company on this journey. Our financing round is led by an outstanding group of Angel Investors, many of whom supported our previous venture, Mastery Connect. They’re joined by institutional capital from GSV Ventures, Reach Capital, Avalanche VC, and Long Term Impact. We’re thankful to this group of forward-thinkers who understand what’s possible when edtech developers can focus on the work that directly impacts outcomes for teachers and students.
This weekend we’ll be at ASU+GSV, showcasing Ednition and our RosterStream platform to the brightest minds in education. Find us during the AIR Show at booth P19 on April 13th and 14th, and at the Summit on the 15th through the 17th.
If you're interested in joining us on the Ednition journey and learning how we can help to solve edtech stack challenges, we'd love to hear from you.
Cheers,
Mick and Doug
Over the past three years, the Ednition team has partnered with leading edtech companies, making it easier and more profitable for them to build and scale edtech applications. We've seen how eliminating rostering and interoperability headaches frees product and engineering teams to focus on what truly matters: creating innovative solutions that enhance teaching and learning. That’s why we’re so excited to announce the closing of our $3.5 million seed round led by GSV Ventures. This investment, just six months after our pre-seed round, will fuel our continued growth and drive our mission to make edtech better connected and more impactful.
We are proud to help our partners overcome their trickiest edtech stack challenges. As founders of MasteryConnect, acquired by Instructure in 2019, we experienced the pain of building and maintaining costly infrastructure for rostering and school/district integrations—time better spent building awesome tools for educators and students.
This is why we built Ednition. While others focus on the district side of the house, we solve edtech vendor infrastructure challenges. This means less time and money worrying about rostering and data syncing, SSO, LTI setup, LMS integrations, and those expensive and outdated rostering data services. Our platform, RosterStream, delivers integration with any SIS or third-party data provider, giving vendors the ability to connect with and support the smallest schools to the largest districts.
Not only does Ednition eliminate this costly vendor-side work, we provide the enterprise rostering feature set that gives support and implementation teams the observability and monitoring tools they need to avoid escalating issues to expensive engineering teams. The ability to fan data to multiple applications in the product stack means robust support for the edtech enterprise, and our change detection algorithms mean bad data never reaches vendor systems.
After a busy back-to-school season, Ednition has now processed billions of rostering records for edtech companies. More importantly, as passionate advocates for education, knowing that millions of learners and educators had a more seamless tech experience this fall is what drives us.
This year we’ve significantly improved the RosterStream platform and invested in RosterCare, our private-labeled support. We’ve released many new features, including additional Extended Data Domains, better tools for migrating one data source to another, a mappings and data validation template library, enhanced SSO services, and more advanced private-label tools.
In early 2025, we will add features that allow our users to customize circuit break logic and give them additional controls during data source migrations. Our much anticipated upcoming advanced LMS-integration tools will offer a one-and-done solution for edtech vendors: integrate with RosterStream once to achieve deep API integration with the largest LMS names out there.
As we plan ahead, we see the great transformations being made by AI in education technology. With Ednition, vendors looking to implement AI in their solutions can achieve a more complete picture of student learning by unlocking once-siloed data flows. We look forward to partnering with vendors on AI-driven innovations in the pursuit of true student-centered education.
The Ednition team is deeply grateful for our investors who believe in our vision (and we’re lucky to have familiar faces from our pre-seed round). The seed round, led by GSV Ventures, includes Reach Capital, Avalanche, Array Ventures, and our dedicated angel investors. It’s rare to have the support of such a committed and mission-driven group who share our passion for advancing learning through technology.
If you want to learn about how Ednition rostering and integration solutions can support your teams, we would love to connect. Until then, here’s to a bright future, better edtech, and improving the learning experience everywhere.
Cheers,
Mick and Doug