As a Boston guy, I love learning about local teams coming up with audacious and ambitious ideas to help the education world. Testive is one of those companies that just feels like it’s going to cause some big disruptions in the coming years. Angel investors seem to agree as Testive just raised $500,000 in a seed round.
Why is Testive worth that kind of investment? Because it’s already proven to work and has a real purpose to boosting academic achievement. Testive’s TurboTest™ platform was developed at MIT and can accurately predict students’ scores on the SAT® and other tests 3x faster than traditional practice tests.
Testive’s fundraising round was led by several prominent Boston Angels including Jean Hammond (an active angel and early investor in ZipCar and Pixibiity), Eileen Rudden (Former Chief Officer of Chicago Public School’s College and Career Prep Office), Dharmesh Shah (co-founder of Hubspot), and Bill Warner (founder of Avid and active Boston Angel). Don McLagan, an investor and the former CEO of Compete.com, has joined Testive’s Board as an observer.
Testive’s SAT preparation product, SAT Habit (http://www.sathabit.com) uses TurboTest™ technology to give students get a baseline score in less than an hour and show them how their score increases with every practice session they do.
“I raised my score significantly after I began using SAT Habit, “ said Vignesh Mohankumar, a Junior at Chelmsford High School in Massachusetts. “I loved using SAT Habit because it’s personalized for me. I can move at my own pace, only get problems that help me improve, and I don’t have to waste my time on areas I’m already good at.”
“Tests are the great levelers. They are the best tools we have to objectively measure achievement and that’s why they govern access to so many opportunities,” said Miro Kazakoff, Testive co-Founder and CEO. “Somewhere between cheap, boring prep books and expensive classes is an opportunity to deliver online test prep that doesn’t suck. Testive is building the tools that help students learn more efficiently and more enjoyably.”
To date, Testive has been bootstrapped through technology licensing.
About Testive, Inc.
Testive (http://www.testive.com) develops the world’s most adaptive test preparation products. Over 10K students have used its test preparation and score prediction tools to help them on their preparation journey. Testive’s core TurboTest™ platform was developed at MIT by Tom Rose and delivers highly customized testing and test-prep experiences such as SAT Habit (http://www.sathabit.com). Testive is based in Cambridge, MA and is an alumnus of the TechStars Boston accelerator program.
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A shortened predictive tests will miss a key element of the full picture – in SAT/ACT preparation mental stamina is an essential key to success. LIke one cannot adequately prepare for a long distance run by sprinting, a key part of practice tests is to help students develop the stamina to succeed on the long tests they will take in real life.
We can diagnose core knowledge level and test taking strategy expertise with our online tests at Prepworks in a 1/2 hour also, and our adaptive engine can deliver the right content to the student’s so they don’t waste time covering concepts they already know, but we find that we need to supplement our shorter predictive tests with full length diagnostics in order for students to develop the mental stamina to maximize their performance on the actual, full length tests their content mastery will be judged on.
Performance on a sprint will certainly tell me some things about a student’s ability to succeed in a marathon, but it won’t tell me if they have the stamina to sustain their maximum performance for 3+ hours
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