Penn Students Leave School to Launch CourseKit With $1 Million Seed Round

Three students at the University of Pennsylvania—Joseph Cohen, Dan Getelman, and Jim Grandpre—are quitting school to launch a new education startup called Coursekit , and they've raised $1 million in a seed round to do it. ( Peter Thiel would be proud ). The New York City startup just closed a seed round from Founder Collective, IA Ventures, Shasta Ventures and some angels. Coursekit is like Facebook or Yammer for courses. Like many other students frustrated with Blackboard , the current online course management standard, the Coursekit founders think they can do a better job. "It is really a Blackboard replacement with a heavy emphasis on social networking," says CEO Cohen.