Please welcome, Showbie, as the latest addition to the Rhino Crash!

HQ: Edmonton, AB

Founders: Colin Bramm, Roy Pombeiro

The Problem: Education has forever changed. An industry that has long been known for its glacial-speed sales cycles, chronically tight budgets, and resistant-to-change institutions is undergoing enduring, technology-enabled changes as a result of the pandemic. While the near term will assuredly be bumpy, the long term benefits of educators and students finally being armed with the learning tools that will deliver improved student outcomes is something that should be celebrated. 

It is with that backdrop that we are excited to announce our investment in Showbie, a hybrid learning platform making the teaching experience more productive and the student learning experience more enjoyable and personalized. Importantly, Showbie’s solution is relevant in an omni-channel education environment: both in-person and remote classroom formats.

The Solution: Showbie allows teachers and students to be more productive, in-person and remotely, by offering them a comprehensive suite of digital tools in one simple, easy-to-use app. Through Showbie, teachers can organize classes, upload, mark, and provide feedback (voice, text, stencil) on assignments, and with Socrative, Showbie’s digital assessment tool, they can issue online quizzes and tests in a gamified and instant feedback format. In partnership with video conferencing provider, Whereby, they can also teach classes fully remote. Students are able to submit work, complete quizzes, and attend class remotely, while administrators can monitor teacher engagement and student performance through a customizable dashboard.

Showbie’s solution is hardware and operating system agnostic serving teachers, schools, and districts in 135+ countries. The holy grail for edtech is the ability to quantify its impact on student outcomes. Showbie’s place as the core operating system for educators and students makes it well positioned to own the knowledge graph of student performance; a position that will drive student success.

The Team: Headquartered in Edmonton, AB, the 27 person team is led by Colin Bramm (Cofounder and CEO), a passionate leader with 17 years of EdTech experience. Since first meeting Colin, we’ve been impressed by his highly analytical and pragmatic approach to entrepreneurship, which we believe has contributed greatly to the traction of Showbie thus far. Alongside Colin, Roy Pombeiro (Cofounder and CTO) leads the technical team at Showbie, and has 12+ years of experience developing software within the EdTech space.

Rhino's Perspective: At Rhino, we are strong believers in the potential that technology can have in the educational space and, with COVID-19 closing schools worldwide, the industry is in the middle of a paradigm shift. As schools start reopening and the penetration of classroom devices continues to grow, the need for complimentary software that allows educators to seamlessly create hybrid learning environments will rise proportionately. Solutions like Showbie, previously viewed as optional, will now be critical to creating a successful learning environment.

In a post-COVID world, we believe that education will be delivered as a hybrid model - students will go back to the classroom but digital solutions and the ability to teach remotely will continue to be available. With strong tailwinds, accelerated adoption of software in classrooms, an experienced team, and a proven ability to upsell their product from teachers to schools to districts, we are thrilled to be partnering with Showbie!