CHALK is an easy-to-use classroom observation and professional development platform for early learning and kindergarten classrooms.
Globally, 387 million children aged 6-11 struggle with reading and math proficiency. The foundation for these skills starts in early childhood. A high quality early learning classroom is essential to overcoming these struggles. Yet, a quality classroom is something you know when you see, but it is often hard to measure or replicate. Most early childhood educators don’t receive feedback on the quality of their classroom or guidance on how to improve. CHALK Coaching came from years of rigorous research conducted at Vanderbilt University that focused on identifying what it is about a classroom that creates a quality experience. This research led to the identification of 9 classroom practices that when improved, lead to increased self-regulation skills and academic gains for children; setting up a strong foundation and fostering a love of learning that sets children up for future success. Link to 3-min Video: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/jvs22ub8lwwp8aj0t3nzr/SVS-Video-Submission.mp4?rlkey=og4n9e94ws49woqit6b4hlwdx&st=s2t45kjh&dl=0 [Upload Feature Was not Working]
CHALK has a growing team with strong business and early education backgrounds. Our CEO, Yesi Sevilla, has had a storied career supporting the development of new innovations, the launch of new companies, and developing commercialization strategies. Her deep business expertise combined with the deep educational expertise of our other team members creates the perfect combination of complementary skillsets. Our Chief Partnership Officer Noni Walton has extensive experience in early childhood education and leadership. She has taught, coached, researched, and even started and ran her own school. Our Chief Growth Officer, Phil Kovacs, has built and sold multiple educational technology companies and most recently played a key leadership role in a venture studio. Our product officer, Deanna Meador, not only founded CHALK, but is a serial entrepreneur that has built multiple tech-based companies. She currently holds a record for raising $1.5M in just under 8 hrs.
CHALK’s research concluded this year and now is the time to transition to the market. In the past 2 months, the CHALK team has onboarded 100 classrooms with no marketing or ad spend and during a timeframe that is off cycle for educational organizations to make adoption decisions. Knowing that we were entering at an off-budget cycle time, our initial strategy involved providing no-cost licenses with the understanding that our users would budget and commit to paying for the 25-26 SY. Going forward, our strategy involves 3 main elements: presenting at conferences and tradeshows, engaging educational influencers that receive a commission from the first year contract value for connections to school systems and childcare centers they make and doors they open, and leveraging professional networks and associations. We are in 4 states currently and have two large potential partners in our sales pipeline that each have over 4K classrooms. Our initial partners are United Way, Preschool Promise, Learning Grove, and Vanderbilt Childcare Centers. We are looking for partnerships with other edtech or curricula companies that service this same customer base, strategic investors, and school systems and childcare center networks.
CHALK has both one-time and recurring revenue streams. We charge a fee to onboard a new system or center into the platform and then charge a per classroom fee for annual access to CHALK and for training and professional development resources. We’ve worked to keep costs affordable for educational organizations while at the same time maintaining a healthy margin that will allow CHALK to grow. The average fee for a system with 100 classrooms would be just over $40K.
The CHALK team is currently raising its first round of outside funding. This is a $500K round on a safe note. These funds will be used primarily to onboard our first two key hires and enact our go to market strategy. The funds will be used to cover tradeshow and conference participation, meetings with potential customers, the development of marketing and sales resources, and to deliver a high-quality experience to our initial customers. We will be writing case studies and gathering testimonials from our current relationships as the pilot year concludes.
CHALK’s platform is complete and has active users. Within CHALK, users can get training and professional development on the 9 classroom practices, utilize coaching resources, view crosswalks to see how CHALK connects to other widely used tools and curricula, observe classrooms, view the data, share data, write a conference plan, develop an action plan, send messages, and track progress over time. CHALK also has a separate leader dashboard that allows administrators to view data and track trends across multiple classrooms or an entire system.
The research behind CHALK was conducted at the prestigious Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University and funded $2.8M by the National Science Foundation (DRK-12 #1813008). CHALK is raising its first round of funding currently and is pre-revenue.
