NoRedInk
17 known investors
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NoRedInk is an online writing and grammar curriculum that offers adaptive practice exercises, scaffolded essays, quick writing prompts, and diagnostics aligned to state and national standards. It serves K-12 teachers and students, including English learners and elementary grades 3-5, to build writing skills and track student progress.
Also known as no red ink
Founders & leadership
Investors · 17
Also in the syndicate · 2
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements$50M disclosed across 1 of 4 rounds · 2013–2021
- $50MSeries BAug 2021 · 2 sourcesSource ↗
Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026NoRedInk operates an online writing education platform for Grades 3-12. The product combines adaptive skill-building exercises (sentence restructuring, text markup, multi-paragraph passage manipulation), lightweight writing prompts, scaffolded essays, guided reviews, and standards-aligned diagnostics. Exercises are personalized using student-supplied interests such as favorite celebrities, characters, friends and pets. Teachers, school administrators and district stakeholders receive diagnostic data, growth reports and gradebooks, and content can be filtered by alignment to state and national standards and tests.
The platform has expanded beyond grammar practice into a broader writing curriculum. Recent additions include an AI-powered Grading Assistant that scores and gives feedback on argumentative and literary analysis essays with more genres being added, Read-Write-Reason integrated reading and writing activities, a Language Support Suite for English learners (single-word translations, simple definitions, translated directions, text-to-speech, EL standards and test prep prompts), ELA resources for Grades 3-5, and Originality Insights, which reports how long students spend writing and flags text pasted from external sources.
The company offers a free, limited version for teachers alongside a paid Premium tier for schools, which unlocks exercises for more than 1,000 skills, hundreds of texts, prompts and lessons, guided practice for 10+ writing genres, teacher/school/district-level reporting, professional development, and integrations with Canvas, Clever and Schoology.
Founding story
NoRedInk was founded by Jeff Scheur, a high school English teacher at Whitney Young Magnet High School in Chicago. Over eight years of teaching he observed that students could not properly understand the mistakes they made on written assignments, so he built a taxonomy of commonly spotted errors accumulated over several years. In his eighth year of teaching he posted an advertisement on Craigslist seeking an engineer to help build an educational platform, and his students voted on the name "NoRedInk."
Business model
Freemium software-as-a-service for schools: a free limited version is available to individual teachers, while NoRedInk Premium is sold to schools and districts for full access to the writing curriculum, guided composition tools, district-level reporting, professional development and LMS integrations. Press coverage notes that thousands of schools request upgrades to the paid version every month.
Paid subscriptions to NoRedInk Premium purchased by schools and districts, upsold from a free teacher tier.
Traction
Reached 15,000 users in the two months after its February 2012 launch; by 2021 press reports described use in more than 60% of US school districts, and the company currently states use in one in two US school districts, with thousands of schools requesting paid upgrades monthly.
Latest developments
The company is rolling out Read-Write-Reason integrated reading and writing activities and an AI-powered Grading Assistant, initially covering argumentative and literary analysis essays with more genres releasing through the back-to-school season. It has also introduced a Language Support Suite for English learners, ELA resources for Grades 3-5, and Originality Insights for academic integrity.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
An established provider of digital writing curriculum in US K-12 schools, positioned as a complement to core ELA curriculum. The company states it is used in one in two US school districts; 2021 press coverage cited use in over 60% of US school districts.
Combines adaptive grammar and writing practice with interest-based personalization, scaffolded essay workflows, standards alignment, and reporting at teacher, school and district levels, plus AI grading positioned to cut teacher grading time while increasing feedback volume.
Technology
Web-based adaptive learning platform that personalizes exercises to student interests and proficiency, delivers differentiated scaffolding when students get stuck, and applies AI to grade argumentative and literary analysis essays against standards-aligned rubrics. Additional technology includes text-to-speech and translation features for English learners and writing-process telemetry (time-on-task and paste detection) in Originality Insights.
Go-to-market
Bottom-up teacher adoption through a free sign-up tier that converts into school- and district-level paid Premium contracts, supported by educator testimonials, a content blog, professional development offerings and integrations with widely used systems such as Canvas, Clever and Schoology.
K-12 English language arts teachers, students in Grades 3-12 (including newly added Grades 3-5 elementary resources), English learners, students with learning disabilities, and school and district administrators.
Geography
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, with an English-language product used across US school districts.
History
The platform launched in 2012. Scheur shared the first version with colleagues at an Illinois conference in February 2012, and the application reached 15,000 users within its first two months. In September 2012 the company won the Citi Innovation Challenge hosted by NBC, receiving $75,000 in prize money. A $2 million seed round followed in January 2013 with investors including Google Ventures, and a Series A led by True Ventures came in February 2015. In August 2021 the company raised a $50 million Series B led by Susquehanna Growth Equity with participation from True Ventures. Subsequent product expansion has included AI-assisted grading and curriculum for younger grades.
Compiled by commissioned research from 5 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 7
launches, deals, and filingsTeachers can use the Grading Assistant to provide scores and feedback, with additional essay genres rolling out through the back-to-school season.
Blog post "New in NoRedInk: AI Grading, Reading Mode, and More."
Funds intended to improve the product and expand business reach.
$50M source ↗
$2M source ↗
NoRedInk won the Citi Innovation Challenge, hosted by NBC, receiving $75,000 in prize money.
$75K source ↗
Jeff Scheur shared the first version of NoRedInk with colleagues at an Illinois conference; the application grew to 15,000 users in its first two months.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 5
primary sources listed
- NoRedInknoredink.com · web
5 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does NoRedInk do?
- NoRedInk is a web-based writing and grammar curriculum platform for Grades 3-12 teachers and students.
- Who founded NoRedInk?
- NoRedInk was founded by Jeff Scheur.
- Who are NoRedInk's investors?
- NoRedInk's investors include 500 Global, Fresco Capital, GSV Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Imagine K12, Kapor Capital, Reach Capital, Rethink Education and 7 more.
- How much funding has NoRedInk raised?
- NoRedInk has disclosed $50M raised across 1 of its 4 known rounds.