Mathspace crowned best company at Advance Innovation Summit

Cloud-based start-up Mathspace has secured $20,000 in funding after winning the best company category at the second Advance Innovation Summit in Silicon Valley.

Mathspace, founded by Mohamad Jebara and Chris Velis, is a mathematics eLearning app, which “combines the textbook, workbook and mark book into a single online platform”.

The platform allows students to answer maths problems step-by-step and provides help if students get stuck along the way.

Impressively, Mathspace has been added to the NSW Syllabus and Australian Curriculum for Years 7 to 10, while Years 11 and 12 will become available this year.

Earlier this year, Mathspace was selected as one of 25 start-ups for the 2013 Advance Innovation Program, which kicked off this month.

This program gives Australian start-ups the opportunity to network with top-tier incubators, accelerators and investors in Silicon Valley.

“After traveling to Silicon Valley to compete with nine of the 25 firms that took part in the Advance Innovation Program, Mathspace CEO Mohamad Jebara put forward Mathspace’s vision to a panel of potential investors,” the company wrote in a blog.

“We’re thrilled to announce that we successfully outpitched the nine other start-ups to win the best company category at the second annual Advance Innovation Summit.

“We have a number of amazing new developments we’ll be working on in the coming months such as our adaptive learning platform and video tutorials, as well as bring Mathspace to both Android and Windows tablet devices.”

It’s been reported Mathspace won a $20,000 capital investment from newly-established venture capital firm Blackbird Ventures, which is based in Silicon Valley.

According to Jebara, Mathspace is “just kicking off”.

“We’ve only just launched the iPad application this year. What we wanted to get out of it was the investment to take our technology to a global scale,” Jebara told The Australian.

“Obviously, that will take a lot of work with countries having different curriculums.”

Blackbird Ventures could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, Mathspace faces the prospect of securing additional funding after being named one of the 11 start-ups that will pitch at Echelon Ignite: Australia in Sydney on May 8.

Echelon Ignite is a spinoff of Echelon, which claims to be the largest tech conference in Asia.

Echelon 2013 will be held in Singapore on June 4-5. Investors, mentors and industry leaders will discuss trends in digital, mobile, the internet and the direction of Asia’s tech industry.

Mathspace is one of 11 Australian start-ups that will pitch to a panel of business mentors and innovation-focused investors for a slot at Echelon 2013.