In 2008 we were still working on Courses.  It’s hard to imagine we kicked off 2009 with a Schools on Facebook pilot at Michigan State University, our second app after our pre-alpha launch at Abilene Christian University.  At that point, our product and team was worlds away from where it is now.  It’s amazing how much progress a small company can make in a year.

Our Series A

We raised an additional round of capital from Retro Venture Partners and Founders Fund.  Added to our Board of Directors is famous Sillicon Valley investor Larry Mohr, a founder of Mohr Davidow investors with Bill Davidow, former head of marketing for Intel.

More Founding Partners Go Live

We had two successful launches at Arizona State University and Columbia College Chicago.  At both campuses, we rapidly got over 20% of the student body (concentrating amongst Freshman and Sophomores) with a modest amount of marketing.  We commonly see half the users coming back once a week or more, and see students reaching out to one another in ways not possible without our application.

Arizona State on Facebook

We’re in the process of going live with more Founding Partners: Stetson University, University of Lethbridge, and Maricopa Community Colleges. Our first Innovation Partner (clients making a commitment from August 09 – March 2010), New Jersey Institute of Technology, signed on and will be ready to go live soon. At this point, we’re approaching the ability to touch the lives of almost 250,000 students.

Product Gets More Robust

We’ve launched two of our core features: Organizations and Experiences.  With Organizations, we’re starting to see it used as an internal communications tool amongst residence halls, intramurals, and various cultural organizations.  We’ve seen Experiences used effectively used as a way for people to reflect on and celebrate going through important school traditions.

"Organizations" in Columbia College Chicago on Facebook

Team Gets Bigger, Better

Mark Triest joined Inigral as our company President from Sungard Higher Education, where he led Global Sales and Marketing as its Senior Vice President.  Nick Punt came from Facebook app incubator FB Fund to become our Vice President of Products, and happens to have a life-long passion for educational product design and an MBA/M.Ed from Stanford to boot.

Team Inigral, Fall 2009 (UC Berkeley Campus)

The Move Towards Admissions

Several admissions teams are committed to work with us to launch the best social accepted student tool around.

Facebook Gives Us The Shout Out

We presented at Developer Friday at Facebook Headquarters, and Facebook made us the first post on the Facebook Applications page, featured us on their Platform page, and made us the first post on their Education page.  I think they have a crush on us.

We also presented at the Facebook Developer Garage, which was hosted, well, in our office by Causes, our upstairs neighbor.

Finally, Inigral Eats its own Dogfood

We finally got the bandwidth to make a company blog, update our website, and manage a twitter and Facebook page.  Funny, huh?  It turns out even we suffer from Social Media overhead.  How do you like our blog?  I think it’s hot stuff.