Keith Schacht

Keith Schacht (born December 9, 1979) is an American entrepreneur and angel investor.[1] He is the CEO and co-founder of Mystery Science and is on the board of directors of eSpark Learning.[2] Schacht is a named inventor on 9 patents.[3] Early in his career he was named one of the top 20 entrepreneurs under 25 by BusinessWeek.[4] He has been a speaker at the TED Conference and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal,[5] Forbes,[6] Fortune,[7] and Wired.[8]

Keith Schacht
Born (1979-12-09) 9 December 1979
United States
Alma materUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Known forMystery Science
TED Conference
Facebook
Spouse(s)Pari Schacht

Career

Schacht's first company, founded while in college, was Lever Works, a custom software development shop. It was co-founded with Brian Witlin and Zach Kaplan. In December 2001 Lever Works was sold to Leo Media for an undisclosed sum.[9]

In 2002, Schacht co-founded Inventables, a company that educates companies about new materials and technologies. The company was featured in numerous publications including Forbes in 2006[6] and Wired in 2007. He also gave a talk on "Toys from the Future"[10] at the TED Conference in 2005

In 2007, Schacht founded Crafted Fun, an early company building applications on the Facebook platform. Crafted Fun raised funding from Apex Ventures and Naval Ravikant.[11] The company developed a range of Facebook applications including Grow-a-Gift which was cited as a top application used by millions of people.[12]

In 2010, Schacht joined Facebook as a product manager and launched an updated version of News Feed in 2011.[13][14][15] He left the company in 2012. During his time at Facebook he was a named inventor on 9 patents.[3]

In 2013, Schacht co-founded Mystery Science with Doug Peltz. Mystery Science creates open-and-go lessons for elementary teachers and helps them teach science without requiring a background in science.[16] A couple notable interviews with Y Combinator, one their investors, detailed an unconventional business model in which the company sold to schools and districts across the United States without a sales team.[17][18] Mystery Science has grown to be the most widely used science resource in American elementary schools; tt is used by more than 50% of elementary schools reaching more than four million children each month.[19] In 2020 Mystery Science was acquired by Discovery Education for $140 million.[20] Schacht is listed as the majority shareholder at the time of acquisition[21] bringing his total net worth up to at least $70 million.

Investments

Schacht is an investor in at least 25 private companies and numerous public companies. Notable investments include investing in Boom, Credit Karma, Canva, Epic!, Angellist, OpenGov, Square (pre-IPO), Tesla (pre-IPO), and Facebook (pre-IPO).[22]

References
  1. "Facebook - Keith Schacht". 25 December 2020.
  2. "LinkedIn - Keith Schacht".
  3. "Keith Schacht Inventions, Patents and Patent Applications". 25 December 2020.
  4. "Entrepreneurs: Cream of the Young Crop". 28 December 2005.
  5. Gamerman, Ellen (2020). "What to Let the Kids Watch When You're All Stuck at Home".
  6. Lambert, Emily (2006). "Gadgets to Go".
  7. Julie Schlosser (1 November 2004). "Inside-the-box Thinking".
  8. Betsy Schiffman (22 May 2008). "Facebook To Go Under the Knife".
  9. Lueken, Abbie (6 June 2005). "Student Entrepreneurs Make Dreams a Reality". Archived from the original on 18 July 2011.
  10. "Toys from the Future". 2008.
  11. "Keynote Speakers". 2010. Archived from the original on 26 September 2011.
  12. Farmer, Jesse (2007). "Hottest Facebook Apps".
  13. Parr, Ben (2011). "Facebook Changes News Feed So You Never Miss Vital Updates".
  14. Swartz, Jon (2011). "Facebook, Google+ announce new features".
  15. Taylor, Colleen (2011). "Facebook wants to be the newspaper of your dreams".
  16. "Mystery Science Helps Teachers Dazzle Their Students With Interactive Science Classes". Forbes. 17 August 2017.
  17. "Cost vs Quality in Edtech – Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston". 6 April 2018.
  18. "Keith Schacht and Doug Peltz on What Traction Feels Like – at YC Edtech Night". 27 November 2017.
  19. "Mystery.org".
  20. Tony Wan (3 November 2020). "Discovery Education Acquires Mystery Science in $140 Million Deal".
  21. "Team — Mystery".
  22. "Keith Schacht — AngelList".
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