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PRZOOM - /newswire/ -
Oberlin, OH, United States, 2010/03/06 - Skritter.com, the best way to study Chinese characters (Hanzi) and study Japanese Kanji announces commitment of angel investors. The rapidly growing startup expects to use the financing to improve and market the site.
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Inkren, the company that makes Skritter.com has secured letters of intent for a financing round expected to close in late-March 2010. The financing commitment comes just weeks after the successful launch of the study Japanese Kanji version of the site.
The commitment will allow Skritter to focus on marketing, support, and continued development. Skritter is popular amongst its users but the marketing focus will be to make the site more widely known by both learners and teachers. The service, being unlike any others on the market now and only being possible with recent technologies, is something that has been well received by those who have taken a look; Skritter’s challenge is to make its unique approach known to the majority of Japanese and Chinese language learners.
Inkren’s Skritter team concluded that making the tool more widely known is key to getting the resources to making the tool better long-term. Marketing for teachers will highlight how Skritter complements their work with built-in study lists for most major textbooks while student-focused marketing will highlight how much more efficient and effective studying Chinese and Japanese writing is while also mentioning support for custom study lists of words that are important to them.
Development has progressed rapidly with updates several times a month, often based on and refined by excellent user feedback. Funding will let Skritter add more new features faster and refine existing features. Skritter has had success with some excellent Interns and licensing technologies to save development time. Additional funding will help us help our users to learn Mandarin Chinese and Japanese faster.
Support is a value-added activity for Skritter with user feedback keeping the team honest, showing what needs to be improved, and providing insight into how to improve. Support extends beyond simple bug fixes and extends to supporting learning generally. In February Skritter mailed 43 t-shirts to contest winners who all studied using Skritter for at least 10 minutes per day for an entire month and the Skritter team regularly profiles successful users to inspire and encourage learners. Progress feedback charts, email and twitter goal reminders, and a supportive community forum are just the start of what Skritter would like to offer to support, guide and motivate our users to the goal of fluency. Investments in supporting users and their teachers will take aim at making these tough languages a little easier to learn.
One of the angel investors will join Inkren working for equity, as all three founders do, focusing on sales and marketing. Keeping recurring costs low and in-line with revenues, and building up the subscriber base are all designed to provide solid long-term financial security. In this vein, Skritter is structuring these investments as equity and plans to continue its growth debt-free.
Skritter.com, the Write way to learn Japanese and Chinese.
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