A Boise software company Wednesday will announce a cash infusion from investors totaling $2.5 million. Silverback Learning Solutions hasn’t been doing business two years yet, but CEO Jim Lewis says its sales total more than a million dollars and it has 20 full time employees. It also has one unusual partner that gets 8 percent of profits; the Blaine County School District. Lewis retired from his job as Blaine County’s superintendent to form the company.
Silverback’s product, known as Mileposts, is an educational management program. It allows teachers to track a student’s progress through his or her academic career and plan ways to help the student improve. Lewis says the product is in schools in 13 states including more than 30 districts in Idaho. That’s despite the fact the state gives Idaho districts free access to a program meant to do the same things.
“Almost every software vender in our space, including most of the state systems that were built with race to the top money, were built from the top down,” Lewis says. “And ours is the complete reverse of that. It was built from the teacher’s desk up.”
The program was designed in the early 2000s by a group of Blaine County teachers working with a software engineer. The teachers would tell the engineer what they wanted the program to do, he’d write the code, they’d test it and give feedback. Lewis says it did wonders in Blaine County schools, even reducing the number of students who needed to take special ed classes.
The money Silverback gets Wednesday from investors will allow it to expand operations into more states.
Copyright 2013 Boise State Public Radio