Sparkmind.vc leads €1.1m seed round for School Day
Press release, 14 May 2020
Nordic venture capital company, Sparkmind.vc, has led a €1.1m seed funding round for student wellbeing solution provider School Day. Existing and new investors including Lifeline Ventures and angel investor John Martin, former CEO of Sanoma Learning, also participated.
The investment will enable School Day to expand international business development in key markets and grow their core team. It will also allow the business to build on recent exponential growth generated by schools’ concerns about pupil wellbeing as a result of the recent shift to distance learning.
This is the second investment for Sparkmind.vc’s €40m education focused venture capital fund. It follows an investment of €1.5m in Fuzu’s Series A round in March 2020.
Kai Talas of Sparkmind.vc commented: “We believe that student wellbeing is set to be one of the key topics in global K-12 education and see significant opportunities ahead for the business. School Day has already established a strong position in this sector with an exceptional team and a unique data rich product.”
School Day measures and analyses realtime student survey data to enhance wellbeing, which is a key influence on learning outcomes. This provides teachers and school leaders with insights into their students’ wellbeing and identifies areas for whole school improvement. School Day’s work is backed by expert research from leading Finnish universities and builds on a global body of work (OECD et al) that shows a clear link between student wellbeing and academic progress.
Mika Kasanen, School Day’s CEO added: “We’re excited about how this new investment allows us to expand into new markets. School Day has seen unprecedented demand since schools closed and it’s clear that schools and teachers need help to measure, analyse and encourage student wellbeing. Support from Sparkmind.vc and our existing investors will enable us to respond to these opportunities - they’re already proving to be perfect partners for the next stage of our growth journey.”
School Day has had notable success selling to education customers across Scandinavia and now has over 10,000 active users. Its remote education proposition, School Day @ Home, has been used by schools in 25 countries in recent weeks to support the wellbeing of students as they learn away from school. School Day also has international partnership agreements in place with Microsoft and PowerSchool.
About School Day
School Day is an EdTech company founded in Finland in 2017. Its solution collects and analyses realtime student survey data to help schools improve their wellbeing. Leaders at school and district level use these critical data insights to address students’ barriers to learning and to inform whole-school decision making. Everything starts by asking students a simple question: “How are you?”
Mika Kasanen, Co-founder & CEO, mika.kasanen@schoolday.fi, +358 40 551 2116
About Sparkmind.vc
Sparkmind.vc is the first Nordic venture capital company exclusively focused on the learning sector. The company invests from Seed to Series B stages in teams transforming how the world learns. Its investments are focused on solutions that improve learning outcomes, increase access and efficiency of learning or use data insight to better support educators and learners.
Kai Talas, Partner, kai@sparkmind.vc, +358 40 179 20 44