Education startup Intersective is using a $3.75 million ‘deep tech’ investment to “get back into the lab”

Education tech startup Intersective wants to get students learning real-world skills, and a $3.75 million investment from Main Sequence Ventures is allowing its founders to “get back into the lab”, with a renewed focus on R&D.

Main Sequence Ventures, the manager of CSIRO’s $200 million innovation fund, is focused on ‘deep tech’ and announced initial plans to invest in Intersective in October last year.

Speaking to StartupSmart at that time, Main Sequence partner and ex-Pollenizer chief executive Phil Morle defined deep tech startups as those which are “solving a difficult problem with a unique solution, often achieved through science of technology”.

Founded in 2010 by Suzy Watson, Beau Leese and Wes Sonnenreich, Intersective is designed to solve one such difficult problem.

The startup’s machine learning-enabled platform, Practera, connects students with corporate and government accelerator, internship and mentoring programs, allowing for what Watson calls “experiential education”.

“The platform provides actionable data and insights based on interactions of participants,” she tells StartupSmart.

Watson says the technology helps students learn certain life skills that are difficult to pick up in the classroom.

“The 21st century skills that most people are going to need for their jobs in the knowledge economy are not easily learnt by current teaching methods,” she says. Read more

Stephanie Palmer-Derrien - Smart Company - 7 Jun 2018