Monarch Teaching Technologies Lands $250,000 Investment From JumpStart Inc., Plans Move To Cleveland

Cleveland venture development organization JumpStart Inc. said it has invested $250,000 in Monarch Teaching Technologies Inc., a Shaker Heights company that makes special education teaching software called VizZle.

As a result of the investment, Monarch will move to Cleveland. The investment comes from the Health-Tech Corridor Attraction Fund, a $2 million carve-out of JumpStart’s $10 million Evergreen Fund that invests in companies that move to Cleveland’s Health-Tech Corridor.

Monarch was founded in 2005 “to develop visual learning software for the treatment of children and adolescents with autism,” according to a JumpStart news release. The resulting software, called VizZle, “has since been adapted for use by schools, clinicians and parents of children with all sorts of other special education needs as well,” JumpStart said.

Rem Harris, JumpStart’s senior partner in charge of investing, said in a statement that the software “is a truly unique and innovative product” that “aligns to specific state education standards and tracks progress against individualized education plans — making it a valuable product for teachers and school administrators.”

Monarch president and CEO Bob Gephart said in a short video accompanying the investment announcement that special education is “a very fragmented space that has lot of options.” The JumpStart investment, he said, will help Monarch build “the sales infrastructure and the marketing initiatives that we need to take this (company) to the next level.”

Read the full story at Crain’s Cleveland Business.