Education Technology · Profile from Education Technology Research Companion
Clever, Inc.
The San Francisco company that became the login and rostering layer of American K-12 education. Founded in 2012 out of Y Combinator, it gave schools a free single sign-on and automatic class rosters for their apps, charged the app developers instead, reached most US schools, and was sold to Norway's Kahoot! in 2021 for up to $500m.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2012, San Francisco, California (Y Combinator Summer 2012 batch)
- Founders
- Tyler Bosmeny (CEO 2012–2022), Dan Carroll, Rafael Garcia
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California, USA
- Ownership / structure
- Wholly owned subsidiary of Kahoot! (since 2021). Kahoot! itself was taken private in 2023–24 by a consortium led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management with General Atlantic, Kahoot! co-founder Johan Brand's Glitrafjord and KIRKBI (reported); delisted from Oslo Børs in early 2024 (verify date)
- Leadership (2026)
- Trish Sparks, CEO since May 2022 (former middle school teacher and Clever's head of sales and customer success) (verify 2026); Tyler Bosmeny remains a board member and adviser (reported 2022)
- Segment and buyer
- K-12 infrastructure: rostering (Secure Sync), single sign-on (Instant Login, Clever Badges), identity and access management, and a teacher/student portal. Free for schools; edtech application partners pay; paid premium tiers for districts
- Scale (learners/customers, latest reported revenue)
- ~89,000 schools and about half of US K-12 students at the 2021 sale (company claim); more than ~110,000 schools (company claim, 2025–26); revenue in the ~$40m range around 2021 (reported via Kahoot! disclosures; verify); later revenue not separately disclosed
- Capital raised / valuation / market cap
- ~$43m of venture capital in total: seed (2012), $10.3m Series A led by Sequoia (December 2013), $30m Series B led by Lightspeed (December 2014). Acquired by Kahoot! for ~$435m upfront plus up to ~$65m earn-out (up to ~$500m), ~82% cash and ~18% Kahoot! shares
- Signature moves (including notable failures)
- Free-for-schools, developer-pays rostering API (2012); Instant Login SSO and $30m Series B (2014); Clever Badges QR login for young children (2015, verify); district premium tier Clever Complete (2019, verify); remote-learning surge (2020); sale to Kahoot! (2021); identity-security platform with MFA and IDM (2024). Misses: limited international expansion after the Kahoot! deal; Kahoot!–Clever cross-selling smaller than promised (reported)
7 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2012
Founding and Free for Schools Model
Launch and pricing model
2014
Instant Login and Series B
Product launch and funding round
2015
Clever Badges
Product launch
2019
Clever Complete Paid District Tier
Pricing change (premium district tier)
2020
Remote Learning Surge
Crisis response / scale-up
2021
Sale to Kahoot
Acquisition (Clever as target)
2024
Identity Security Platform
Product strategy / launch