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Pelican
Techstars '23Techstars '23Techstars '23New York City, US · 33 employees on LinkedIn · 2 known investors
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Pelican Invests creates educational content for children ages 3–7 that teaches financial literacy concepts including saving, goal setting, and decision-making through stories and classroom materials. The company offers a picture book series, activity guides, and resources for families, teachers, schools, and libraries.
Also known as Pelican Invests
Founders & leadership
Investors · 2
How we know: the Techstars portfolio · open dataset · Top 3000 Accelerator Startups (no YC) 2026-08 · Not right? Tell us
How we know: funding news · Not right? Tell us
Company profile
researched Sep 2026Pelican is a New York City-based company working at the intersection of children's financial education and family education savings. Its founder describes the company as offering a platform through which families and friends can pool contributions toward a child's future education, positioned as an alternative to existing education-savings options that the founder characterized as complex, oriented toward wealthy households, or lacking tools for coordinating contributions across a family.
The company's stated mission is to give families accessible tools and resources for setting and meeting financial goals tied to a child's education, combining conventional financial services with consumer technology. Alongside the savings product, Pelican produces educational material for young children covering saving, goal setting and decision-making, delivered through a picture book series, activity guides and materials for families, teachers, schools and libraries.
Founding story
Founder Alexandra Bono has said the idea for Pelican came from her own attempt to contribute to a niece's college fund, which led her to conclude that available education-savings options were either too complicated, aimed at wealthy families, or offered no mechanism for managing contributions among relatives. Bono, who previously worked on fintech and payments products, met co-founder William Su through a Social Venture Incubator program at Columbia Business School; during the program the two interviewed 70 prospective customers to define the problem and shape the product roadmap. Su holds a master's degree in data science and qualitative methods from Columbia University and has a background in computer science and machine learning, and has led the building of Pelican's technology.
Business model
Pelican offers a consumer platform for education savings aimed at families and their extended networks, together with educational content products for young children distributed to families, teachers, schools and libraries.
Traction
The company's first outside capital was a non-dilutive grant from the Accelerate(HER) Fund, which the founder described as enabling the product to launch and reach its next milestone.
Latest developments
As of an April 2023 founder interview published by Graham & Walker, Alexandra Bono was serving as founder and CEO and the company was continuing to develop and refine its product roadmap.
▸Full profile — market position, go-to-market, geography
Market position
Pelican positions itself against traditional education-savings vehicles, which its founder describes as complex, geared toward wealthier households, or without support for coordinating contributions among family members.
The company emphasizes a simple, secure and community-oriented approach to education savings that lets multiple family members and friends contribute to one child's fund, paired with age-appropriate financial-literacy content.
Go-to-market
Families saving for a child's education, including extended family and friends contributing to a child's fund, as well as teachers, schools and libraries using children's financial-literacy materials.
Geography
Headquartered in New York City, United States.
Compiled by commissioned research from 7 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 · 1
launches, deals, and filingsPelican received a non-dilutive grant from the Accelerate(HER) Fund, sponsored by Tiger Global Impact Ventures with Hello Alice and the Global Entrepreneurship Network; the founder described it as the company's first check, used to get the product off the ground. The amount was not disclosed.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 7
primary sources listed
- Pelican Imaging Closes $10 Million Funding Roundventurecapitaljournal.com · web
7 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Pelican do?
- Pelican builds financial-literacy content and education-savings tools aimed at children and their families.
- Who founded Pelican?
- Pelican was founded by Alexandra Bono.
- Who are Pelican's investors?
- Pelican's investors include Techstars, Granite Ventures Llc.
- Where is Pelican headquartered?
- Pelican is headquartered in New York City, US.