Both of these brands will continue to operate independently - a choice that Grauer says is part of his operating thesis of supporting the “decentralized empowerment of entrepreneurs.” That deal helped bolster Course Hero’s math offering, and today’s acquisition should help Course Hero deepen its literature resources. In October, Course Hero acquired Symbolab, an artificial-intelligence-powered calculator that helps students answer and understand complex math questions. This is Course Hero’s second acquisition in the past eight months. With LitCharts under its wing, Course Hero is putting a significant investment in its literature library, which is chockfull of videos, illustrations and notes on texts. The company has been building out its literature library for the past five to six years. That webbing - or connecting students from one resource to another - could be one of the benefits of virtual education, because there is essentially a history log of every error, stumble and pause that a student makes as they’re going through a lesson. “We want to make sure that we have the best solution for a specific area, and then at the right moment in time, be able to make a really authentic recommendation of another tool or another offering that can be helpful for you ,” Grauer said of Course Hero’s long-term ambition. Course Hero founder Andrew Grauer estimates that about 30% of LitCharts’ subscribers are teachers and educators. Similar to SparkNotes, LitCharts is all about making complex passages less complex. LitCharts provides notes, definitions and translations on over 2,000 literary texts. The creators of SparkNotes, Ben Florman and Justin Kestler, created LitCharts as an extension of their initial success. That said, Course Hero last raised an $80 million Series B in August 2020, and assumedly a portion of that check went to this deal. LitCharts, an offshoot of SparkNotes, got scooped up today by a newly minted edtech unicorn, Course Hero. History in mind, it makes sense that the creators of everyone’s favorite procrastination tool, SparkNotes, are getting noticed by an edtech unicorn. The site, which offered summaries of books on a chapter-by-chapter basis, was the best way to review novels before a quiz - or, was the best last-minute savior if you procrastinated too much and never got around to opening the book in the first place. I’ll admit it: I was the student that tipped the teacher off that half of our English class, including me, was using SparkNotes to “read” “Twelfth Night” by Shakespeare, instead of actually reading the text itself.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |