Online educational video hub Mobento has just closed a £1.1 million round of seed funding.
Tech City-based Mobento offers a curated library of educational videos, available to schools and students through a website and mobile apps from anywhere.
Mobento’s seed round of £1.1 million is from a small (undisclosed) consortium of classic angel investors, and Mobento founder Sumner Murphy will use the funding to scale the business.
The company was founded by Murphy who, attracted by London’s lively tech startup environment, moved from New York to London last year. Murphy’s aim is to bring the educational technology sector “up to speed” with the advances made elsewhere in business, social networks and mobile.
“Video is an incredibly powerful tool in education,” says Murphy. “It slots right into the behaviour and customs of contemporary students and enables the world’s best educators to reach out to students all over the world.”
Mobento Search
The company’s “Mobento Search” allows users to search the entire archive of content for the words that were spoken. Students can time in the word “enzymes”, for example, and find a set of lectures and videos from Yale, TED, Khan Academy and Bozman Science where speakers mention the word. Users can also go directly to the moment in the video timeline where the speaker first uses the word, cutting down the amount of time needed to find the relevant segment.
“We’re bringing a two-pronged solution to learning. First, we are dealing with the huge amount of dross out there by making sure we only allow the very finest content into the Mobento library,” explains Murphy.
“The second prong is technology. Even with our zealous curation of great content, we know students benefit from help to find precisely the right content, the first time, in no time. That’s where Mobento Search and other technologies make a huge difference.”