InSpace, a Burlington Vt-based provider of a collaborative video conferencing platform that replicates personal interaction between students and teachers in virtual classrooms, raised $6M in two seed funding rounds.
The funding was led by a $2.6 million investment from Boston Seed Capital and $1.5m each from Gutbrain Ventures and PBJ Capital, in addition to other investors including John Abele (co-founder, Boston Scientific); Jeff Seibert and Wayne Chang (co-founders, Crashlytics and Digits); Rick Gibbs (co-founder, Dealer.com); Hovhannes Avoyan and Mikayel Vardanyan (founder and chief product officer, PicsArt); and Andrew Artz (partner at Social Capital).
The company intennds to use the funds to expand its business reach and development efforts.
Launched in 2020 by Dr. Narine Hall, data science assistant professor and academic program director at Champlain College, and software and video engineer Haykanush Lputyan, InSpace provides a collaborative video conferencing platform that replicates personal interaction between students and teachers in virtual classrooms.
It allows participants to create an engaging environment that fosters collaboration. Each person is represented in a video circle that can freely move around the space. When people are next to each other, they can hear and engage in conversation, and as they move away, the audio fades, allowing for one-on-one and group conversations all in one space. As participants zoom out, they can see the entire space, which provides visual social cues. Participants can use Google docs, Miro board and other tools to collaborate without leaving InSpace.
Teachers can speak to everyone when needed, move between individual students and groups for smaller discussions, and place groups of students in audio-isolated rooms for collaboration. Accessibility for all learners is built in to the core platform, which also features multiple levels of security — including end-to-end encryption, daily Secureframe scanning, and 24/7 alerts — to safeguard users against unwanted participants.
InSpace is used by thousands of professors in over 100 universities and K-12 schools worldwide.
The company is headquartered in Burlington, Vermont, with engineers in the U.S. and Armenia.
FinSMEs
08/06/2021