School administration management platform Compass Education has acquired complementary startup rival Clipboard, for an undisclosed sum.
The deal went through in the least up to Christmas and while the terms were not disclosed, the exit is expected to deliver up to a 10x ROI from Clipboard’s early investors, which include Jelix Ventures and EVP.
While Compass, a 17-year edtech veteran that raised $60 million in 2019, deals with a range of education administrative tasks, from payments to attendance, and communication between parents and schools, Clipboard focused on managing extracurricular programs, such as running sports, clubs, excursions, camps and other co-curricular programs for students.
Compass CEO and cofounder John de la Motte said that adding Clipboard to the mix extends their mission of reducing administration in one of the most operationally demanding parts of school life.
“By welcoming Clipboard, we are uniting specialist extracurricular workflows with the Compass platform to strengthen engagement and streamline operations across the whole school community,” he said.
“Together, we’re building the most connected ecosystem for schools.”
de la Motte said schools will gain real-time, two-way sync across student data, attendance, activities, incidents, timetables, communications and reporting to deliver a single view of student.
Business as usual
Clipboard is used by more than 500 schools with in excess of one million users in Australia.
CEO and cofounder Ed Colyer said joining Compass will see them accelerate their roadmap to save staff time and increase student engagement outside the classroom.
“Clipboard was founded to help students get more out of extracurricular life by equipping schools with the tools they need to take the burden out of managing their programs,” he said.
Meanwhile “it’s simply business as usual” for their customers.
Colyer and cofounder Sam Clarke developed the idea in 2017 while at university and coaching sport at their old school and had to deal with manual systems to track students.
Delighted investors
Jelix previously backed the idea in 2020 in an $850,000 raise and again in late 2022 in a $3.1 million round led by EVP. Queensland’s Sprint Ventures is also an investor.
A delighted Andrea Gardiner from Jelix said she was “incredibly proud of what the Clipboard team has built. The acquisition is the first exit for Jelix Fund I.
“I could not be more delighted that Jelix Ventures was a very early backer of Clipboard — first through a Jelix angel syndicate, then through Fund I, and again in subsequent rounds,” Gardiner said.
“Watching Ed Colyer grow from a university student with a clear sense of purpose into the CEO who has now led Clipboard to join Compass Education Group has been genuinely awe-inspiring.
“This has always been a mission-driven business, built with care for schools, staff and students — and it’s wonderful to see that mission gain a bigger platform.
“A special thank you to Daniel Szekely and the EVP team for the integrity, goodwill and generosity they showed throughout the journey — support like that matters more than people realise.”
EVP’s Daniel Szekely said he enjoyed his time on Clipboard’s board.
“They have delivered an exceptional outcome for their staff and investors. It is a great Australian startup success story,” he said.
“It was started by two founders straight out of university with little professional experience but a whole lot of grit and a clear eyed viewed on the problem they were out to solve.
“I remember in my early days of meeting the guys that they proudly told me they had created a Wikipedia page for EMS (extra curricular management software) and were creating a new market as the third limb of the essential stack of educational software for schools.
“It is demonstrative of what ambitious founders can achieve regardless of their experience.”
