Future Think: GinkgoTree
"I was working on a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Georgia. I was just a lowly TA and I managed to really see a lot of the problems in higher education from an instructor's standpoint," he explains. "Between that and my frustrations as an undergraduate paying beaucoup bucks for course materials," Hasbrouck decided to follow his start-up bliss.
GinkgoTree works in all Web browsers, based on the fact that while upward of 90 percent of students use laptops, student tablet adoption is still just around 6 or 7 percent. It can also integrate with Blackboard.
"Building a native tablet app is sexy, but it doesn't make sense right now. We're not going to build something for a market that doesn't exist," says Hasbrouck. "It works on the iPad in the Safari browser, but it works best on a laptop browser."
The four-person team is still in "the bootstrapping phase," and has around 300 instructors at what Hasbrouck estimates are 150 different universities using the platform. They've got a pilot program in place at Spring Harbor University and will begin focusing on institution-wide adoption after an initial push to get individual instructors on board. "We really just wanted to prove interest and build something that solves a problem," says Hasbrouck.
To experiment with GinkgoTree, visit ginkgotree.com.
- People:
- Scott Hasbrouck
- Places:
- Ann Arbor, Mich.
