Education startup Top Hat Monocle adds $1.1m follow-on to $8m series A.
Top Hat Monocle, a graduate business from the University of Waterloo’s accelerator programme, has landed $1.1m from venture firm Felicis Ventures in addition to a series A round held mid-2012.
During the series A round in July, the Canada-based startup raised $8m in a round led by Emergence Capital Partners with participation from venture firms iNovia Capital, SoftTech VC, Golden Venture Partners, and Version One Ventures.
The Totonto-based firm has now raised $10.6m in venture funding, which includes a C$1.5m ($1.49m) angel round held in July of 2011.
Top Hat provides an in-class and homework online study tool that can be accessed via smartphones and tablets. Students can use the platform to participate in polls, quizzes, interactive demonstrations, and discussion forums.
According to news provider TechCrunch, Top Hat has gone from 20 employees to 70 over the past year, and the platform is now used in 285 schools and campuses, including Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Tech. The company has also recently opened a Sydney-based sales office, and has entered into an agreement to work with cloud-based learning software maker Desire2Learn. It is planning to accelerate growth through integrations, and has aspirations to take its platform international.
Felicis founder Aydin Senkut told TechCrunch: “We discovered Top Hat around the time they closed their Series A. They liked our expertise and passion but didn’t need the money and we didn’t want to wait until the next round, especially when they were growing so quickly so we figured out a way to make it work.”
