There’s also a Baltimore startup in the new Dreamit edtech cohort

Dreamit Health Baltimore seems to be on hold for 2016, but a pair of startups from the area are among the 25 companies in the accelerator’s latest cohort.
Yesterday, we profiled Kermit, a member of the 15-company health-focused cohort.
There is also an edtech cohort as part of Dreamit’s new-look program, and Baltimore is fittingly represented. Lessoncast, which focuses on professional development, is looking to connect with the accelerator’s resources to scale its sales model during the program, said founders Nicole Tucker-Smith and Khalid Smith.
While the company has built technology and refined its practices for teacher education, Smith said the company’s sales to schools and districts have mostly been person-to-person. As they scale up, the company wants to move toward SaaS sales. “That’s something that accelerators do really well,” he said.
While they are Towson University incubator members, Lessoncast hasn’t gone through an accelerator because its founders say they haven’t found the right fit. But, Tucker-Smith and Smith say, changes in Dreamit’s model made it more appealing to apply. Dreamit now offers an option where companies do not have to give up equity, and no longer requires startups to relocate during the length of the four-month accelerator. That’s a better fit for edtech companies, which often take longer to build and have longer sales cycles.
“Dreamit did a lot of things to make accelerator process work for us,” Tucker-Smith said.