The spring semester has wrapped up and it’s been an exciting year for Packback. We started the year as a team of 22 working to find our place in education. Since then, we’ve secured $4.2 million Series A funding, added 20 new team members and reached students at more than 100 universities!
We’re proud of what we’ve achieved so far and we’re excited to take our next steps in pioneering the future of curiosity and critical thinking. What does that look like? This year we are excited to continue growing our team, improving our product and expanding our footprint to awaken and fuel the lifelong learning in every student!
Growing Our Team:
We have an amazing team at Packback, and as we continue to bring on new talent, we are guided by our values. By the end of the summer, there will be a lot of new faces at Packback! We’ll be welcoming five new Strategy Consultants, three Experience Managers and a Data Analysis Engineer!
What Packback’s Working On:
With more funding and larger team, we’re able to invest in our products and create a more impactful student experience. A few of the improvements coming to Packback Questions this year include a more seamless user experience, new features, and a platform that is accessible to all students.
Platform Updates:
- Custom Professor Feedback: We recently launched our Custom Feedback feature (stay on the lookout for a blog post explaining this more in-depth)! Professors will now be able to Praise or Coach students on their questions and responses. With public praising, professors can scale their feedback to help students better understand what makes a quality post. You can see a click-through preview of this feature here!
- Threaded Discussions: This fall, students will be able to reply to replies for a more organic back-and-forth discussion.
Site Infrastructure Investment: We want our users to have a stress-free experience on Packback, so we’re continuing to invest in our infrastructure. Our amazing Engineering team is continuing to improve our platform so we can support more users with faster load times and fewer bugs.
Accessibility: Our mission is to awaken curiosity in EVERY student, which means making our platform accessible for those with mobility, hearing and visual impairments. Over the last year, we’ve been working to meet the WCAG 2.0 Level AA Standards and we are in the final stages of our project! To learn more, check out our Accessibility Statement.
Expanding on Campus:
A growing team and improved platform mean we’re able to reach more students. This year, we are prepared to welcome more than 100K students across more than 100 universities. But we don’t just want to have our platform in universities and colleges. We want to makes sure our professors and students are having the best experience possible, which means supporting them on campus! This year we’ve already visited nearly 25 campuses including a number of Big Ten schools like Penn State, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Ohio State. Interested in following us as we travel across the country? Check us out on Twitter and Instagram!
Pepper:
Of course, our office wouldn’t be complete without Pepper, our favorite Packback Pup! We recently threw her a party to celebrate her 7th birthday! Make sure to send her some love on Instagram and wish her a happy birthday!
