Black-owned edtech company Beanstack has secured another investment from Mark Cuban.
The platform was launched in 2013 by Felix Brandon Lloyd (CEO) and Jordan Lloyd Booke, a husband-and-wife duo with extensive backgrounds in education. Booke served as Google’s head of K-12 education outreach from 2011 to 2013, while Lloyd worked as a teacher and dean at the SEED Public Charter School for seven years.
The idea for Beanstack was sparked while they were reading to their 2-year-old son, inspiring them to focus on increasing literacy rates.
“The early idea for our company came one night when [me and Jordan] were reading a book to our 2-year-old son and soon-to-be big brother,” Lloyd told AFROTECH™ in a previous interview. “He pointed to biracial characters on the page that looked like him and said, ‘That’s me, and that’s little sister.’ The power of reading was so clear. We immediately decided to put our backgrounds in education to work on a new business idea.”
Beanstack initially launched as a book-of-the-month business focused on traditional genres and interests. Over time, it expanded its model by leveraging technology to make it easier for educators and libraries to inspire students to read. The platform now provides enterprise-level software for schools and libraries, enabling them to create customizable reading challenges and curate diverse book selections. A mobile app is also available for families.
Beanstack has been adopted by over 2,500 library systems, 6,000 school buildings, and 180 school districts, reaching more than 13.8 million readers, its website mentions.
In 2014, the company secured a $250,000 investment from Mark Cuban on “Shark Tank.” Today, it has gained Cuban’s backing once again in a $1.5 million seed round led by Riverside Acceleration Capital and Evoce Capital, as mentioned in a news release. Additional investors include Kapor Capital, Militello Capital, the founders, and their families.
The new funding will support scaling efforts and the Reading Culture Trailblazer client marketing program, which recognizes schools where 75% of students use Beanstack’s reading logs.
