We have great news to share: Thecoursebook just won the two top prizes in the only business plan competition designed to use innovation to improve education!

Thecoursebook wins Milken prize...

Conducted by the Milken Family Foundation and Penn Graduate School of Education, the Milken PennGSE competition is the only education-focused business plan competition in the nation. Thecoursebook was selected from a pool of nearly 200 applicants and was reviewed by 60 independent judges before being selected as a finalist. Thecoursebook beat out eight other finalists for the top spot at a final pitch competition on June 9th at the University of Pennsylvania and was awarded $25,000.

... and Startl-Hewlett prize

Thecoursebook also took the top honors (and another $25,000) in the Startl Prize for Open Educational Resources, a competition announced in November 2010 in partnership with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that sought to award the best business plan supporting openly licensed content.

Leveling the playing fields

Many judges said they were impressed by the ease of access that Thecoursebook provides to users along with its potential for further development.

“We picked Thecoursebook because it levels the playing field of content providers and provides an interesting distribution model. At the same time it’s a model that has the potential to become a big business,” said Phoenix Wang, the founder and managing director of Startl and representative from the Open Educational Resources prize.

Thanks!

We are very grateful to have two great organizations join the Kauffman foundation, who has been helping our development since last February, and support our mission to engage lifelong-learners with great online and offline learning resources. We would also like to thank all the people who have brought us their support or encouragement since we started a few months ago.

We will have a lot more to announce in the coming weeks... so keep posted!