Company Description

The Pitch

Gradescope is a web-based smart grading tool developed by computer science doctoral students, former teaching assistants, and a professor from UC Berkeley. The startup aims to streamline the more tedious aspects of the grading process, allowing instructors to grade everything online (including paper-based assignments, which can be scanned) and enable data-driven education. Gradescope’s reusable scoring criteria are designed to improve consistency, promote transparency, and reduce time spent grading by half. The team also plans to roll out additional premium features, which would allow certain assignments to be graded in 10 percent of the time it currently requires.

Traction

The prerevenue startup completed UC Berkeley’s accelerator program SkyDeck, and has attracted more than $1 million in investment funding from angel investors and venture capital funds including K9 Ventures. The Gradescope software has been used to grade over five million questions in over 100 high schools, colleges, and universities. This semester, half of all Berkeley undergraduates are taking courses that use the online tool.