Former National Geographic execs raise $8M for education platform [Startup Roundup]

WHO’S GETTING FUNDED?

Steam Engine, Inc., an early-stage simulation-based learning platform based in D.C., raised $8 million, according to an SEC filing. The early-stage company was founded by Tim Kelly and Vijay Lakshman, two former top executives at the National Geographic Society and Albert Yu-Min Lin, a University of California, San Diego scientist who researches technology-enabled exploration. The investors might include Rob Roy and Sean Gerrity — who moved to Bozeman, Mont., and became president of the American Prairie Reserve after founding the management consulting firm Catalyst in Silicon Valley. They’re both on the company’s board of directors.
Theranostics Health, a Rockville-based biotech firm, has borrowed $300,000, according to an SEC filing.
MailerMailer, a Rockville-based provider of email marketing tools, is acquiring Listcast, the list management service of San Diego-based domain broker Domainate for an undisclosed sum.

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ?

Shana Glenzer, the VP for social marketing at SocialRadar, discussed “What’s next for Google and Apple” on FOX Business.
D.C. entrepreneurs: never forget who you’re rubbing shoulders with. The Washington Post recently profiled Sanjay Singh, a local entrepreneur who saw the Obamacare writing on the wall in 2009, and founded Reston-based hCentive. The company specializes in creating the health exchanges states need to satisfy the requirements of the health care bill. “[W]hat began as a team of three has now ballooned into a 700-employee company with annual revenue exceeding $50 million,” the Post reports.
Former mayor Adrien Fenty was spotted by the Daily Mail vacationing with Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell. Here he is, in a luxury yacht on the Cayman Islands, sporting pink swim trunks. In 2013, Fenty moved to California to work in the Palo Alto office of Perkins Coie.

WHO’S MAKING MOVES?

Onevest (formerly CoFounders Lab) cofounder Shahab Kaviani has been selected to be an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Startup Maryland, a regional branch of UP Global.
Arlington-based Opower announced that its energy use-tracking platform has saved six terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy. Which, according to the press release, is “equivalent to taking all the homes in Alaska and Hawaii — states with a combined total of 2.1 million people — off the grid for a full year.”

BAD NEWS

Minh Nguyen, a serial entrepreneur who had advised many startups in the D.C. tech community, was arrested and charged for the first-degree murder of his ex-wife’s new husband, Corey Mattison. He was arraigned Tuesday.
Don Pyle, the COO of Reston-based cloud computing software company ScienceLogic, his wife Sandy and four of his grandchildren are as yet unnacounted for after a house fire destroyed their home in the outskirts of Annapolis, Md.