![]() ![]() college campuses. In order to be implemented in many institutions across the United States, the company went through an important expansion funded through venture capital from a number of investors. The newly formed company also created different versions of the original platform: Blackboard Classroom and Blackboard Campus.īy 2006, after the merger with WebCT, the platform was used in more than 65% of U.S. At the time, the company offered a hosted version for teachers to try out for free. After only one year in business, its sales almost hit US$1 million. They renamed the CourseInfo platform: Blackboard’s CourseInfo. About a year later, Chasen met with Stephen Gilfus, one of CourseInfo’s co-founders, and together they decided to join forces to form an improved version of Blackboard to attract new capital and scale the business. In 1997, Michael Chasen and Matthew Pittinsky founded Blackboard with an innovative approach in mind: proposing an online learning solution and thinking through online learning standardization. Within a few years, the company built a portfolio of 15 institutional clients including Cornell University, University of Pittsburgh and Yale Medical School. The idea behind CourseInfo was to offer an interactive learning network to help teachers and professors adapt to the new reality of teaching at the time of the Internet. To understand how Blackboard started, we need to look at two companies: Blackboard itself and CourseInfo. Once the leading company in this product category, Blackboard diversified its corporate assets to curb the decline of revenues and to explore new business opportunities. ![]() For this post, we want to paint the picture of one of the first LMS companies: Blackboard. business campuses, theme parks, and government agencies like NASA.It’s time for another company profile. That focus would soon be put to the test by compelling opportunities that are doable, but not within their narrow strategic focus e.g. He and a new partner left to start a virtual card venture focused on the higher education market. When Student Advantage ultimately (and somewhat predictably), ran out of money and was liquidated, the campus card segment was sold to Blackboard. Taren, who was heading up the campus card division, was astounded at how little attention was being paid to pursuing viable revenue models. In 1999-near the peak of the Internet bubble-they were scooped up by Student Advantage, a 'high-concept' venture-backed dot-com that was spending millions to build online market share in the higher-education space. ![]() The entrepreneurs funded their expansion with informal investments from family, friends, angels, and a bank loan. By the time founder Taren Lent and his partner took their system online in 1996, the 'Green Card' had a broad campus following, significant vendor participation, and average monthly revenue of $160,000. The enterprise began as a paper-based debit card that enabled Dartmouth College students to purchase merchandise at participating local pizza shops, copy centers, coffeehouses and the like. This case follows a classic student venture from on-campus conception in 1994, to harvest during the late 90s Internet wave, to its rebirth as a virtual business model. ![]()
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