PackBack Announces $1.5 Million in New Funding, New ‘Answers’ Product
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Packback, which offers short-term rentals for e-textbooks, announced Tuesday it had raised $1.5 million from new and returning investors. It also announced a new product called Packback Answers.
Hyde Park Angels led the round, which included Wintrust Ventures and returning angels Howard Tullman ⇒, CEO of 1871, and Mark Cuban, billionaire star of ABC’s “Shark Tank,” who made a deal to invest in the company during an episode of the show that aired in early 2014.
TiE Midwest Angels, a new Chicago angel syndicate that grew out of a networking group called The Indus Entrepreneurs, also participated; Packback is the group’s first investment. Corey Ferengul, a member of Hyde Park Angels and CEO of digital advertising company Undertone, will join Packback’s board of directors.
“Continued product development is definitely a big focus for us as the platform continues to evolve,” said co-founder Mike Shannon, who appeared on “Shark Tank” with co-founder Kasey Gandham. “We are expanding our team with a focus on product as well as customer expansion.”
Packback, which works out of the offices of health information provider ContextMedia, employs 10 full-time workers and plans to hire two to five more employees, Shannon said. Jumpstart Ventures, an early stage investment fund started by ContextMedia co-founders Rishi Shah ⇒ and Shradha Agarwal ⇒, is also invested in Packback.
Packback has ambassadors at 70 campuses across the country, Shannon said. He declined to disclose the number of books the company had rented or the number of publisher partnerships it had established.
The company, which allows students to rent e-textbooks for as little as $5 for 24 hours, also announced Packback Answers, which it said gives professors a way to interact with students online through textbook-specific discussion boards. The product launched two months ago as a private beta, said co-founder and head of design Jessica Tenuta.
Tenuta said the standalone platform in the future could feature tighter integrations with Packback-offered e-textbooks. She said it grew out of a desire to give professors a way to engage with students and course content outside of office hours.
“We also realized this push toward better value out of textbooks … can’t only be driven by students,” Tenuta said. “We need to care about needs of professors.”
In an email to Blue Sky, the Hyde Park Angels’ Ferengul referred to Packback Answers as a “new type of social network” for its ability to connect students to each other and to professors.
“I think it’s a great way to get the attention of students and provide them value beyond just easier to use, easier to access and more affordable textbooks,” Ferengul said. “It’s a capability that is hard to replicate in the physical world and get the reach Packback can provide.”
Shannon said the company is still working out the business model for Packback Answers but that it will be “far more affordable than what you might see out there from some of the leading learning-management systems.”
Email: aelahi@tribpub.com • Twitter: @aminamania