Poll Everywhere is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company, founded in April 2007 is an online service for classroom response and audience response systems. Poll Everywhere's product allows audiences and classrooms in over 100 countries to use mobile phones, thereby "plotting the obsolescence" of proprietary hardware response devices otherwise known as clickers.
The company raised $20,000 in venture funding from Y Combinator in 2008.
Origins and History
Jeff Vyduna, Brad Gessler, and Sean Eby were coworkers at Deloitte Consulting charged with giving internal presentations. One day, to keep the audience awake, they decided to pull a text message "out of a hat". Code was started in April 2007, and the online site launched in September 2007. During that time, Vyduna matriculated at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. On May 14, 2008, the company placed as a semi finalist in the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Challenge. Vyduna subsequently took a leave of absence when Poll Everywhere was accepted into Y Combinator in mid-2008; In 2010 the company moved to San Francisco.
In September 2012, the company announced it had acquired competitors ClassMetric and TextTheMob
Over 100,000 educators use the product.
Company
The company is managed by two of its cofounders: Jeff Vyduna, Chief Executive Officer; and Brad Gessler, Chief Technology Officer. The company earns revenue via monthly and annual subscriptions to its software as a service website. Bespoke development and onsite technical support are also provided to large enterprise customers and events.
Key Product Launches
- August 2008: US SMS short code support; and International expansion to Australia, Europe and Asia.
- August 2011: Word Clouds for Open Ended Responses
- December 2011: Full Featured Mac Presenter Release
- March 2012: Support for Images and LaTeX in polling answers
- September 2012: Published the first comparison chart for web based audience response systems.
- September 2012: Published Mobile Tools for Presenters
Reception and Publication Mentions
- Mashable.com noted in 2008, "The Usefulness of Poll Everywhere is apparent." http://mashable.com/2009/06/17/poll-everywhere/
- Mentioned in Teaching Generation Text: Using Cell Phones to Enhance Learning'' l" by Lisa Nielsen and Willyn Webb
- Budget Audience Response Pick, Meetings and Conventions Magazine
- Mentioned in "Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments" by Derek Bruff
See also
- Audience Response Systems
References
