Flat World Knowledge, the company I serve as Chief Openness Officer, is making great progress! We released a lengthy press release today full of good news. I include only the first two paragraphs below, which both give a sense of where we’re headed and include an awesome quote from Hooks Johnston of Valhalla Partners:
NYACK, N.Y., March 24 /PRNewswire/ — Flat World Knowledge, the world’s first publisher of commercial open-source college textbooks, today announced that it received $8 million in Series A funding from Valhalla Partners, Greenhill SAVP, and High Peaks Venture Partners, with continued participation from several angel investors.
“This is an exciting investment,” said Hooks Johnston, General Partner at Valhalla Partners. “Like MP3’s blew up the delivery model for recorded music, the blogosphere and online news sources blew up the newspaper business, Flat World Knowledge is poised to blow up the college textbook market. We’re backing the perfect team to make it happen.”
Brian Hirsch from Greenhill SAVP is also blogging about their investment today. Full speed ahead, FWK!!!
The price of textbooks is outrageous and instructors are pushed aside as textbook and online package factories take over online instruction. The industry needs a revolution, and it appears that Flat World Knowledge has some of the ingredients for doing that. Now, if only is uses some of its funding to do something about execution, particularly doing right by students who, after all, are paying the bill.