Texthelp appoints Jason Carroll as Chief Product Officer

We're delighted to announce that Jason Carroll joins our Senior Management team at Texthelp in an exciting new role as our Chief Product Officer. 

Prior to joining Texthelp, Jason spent ten years as an Educational and Assistive Technology Consultant. He’s been with us now for almost a decade. And he’s done a tremendous job for us over the last few years managing our products.  

Founded in 1996, Texthelp has established itself as the global pioneer and leader in cloud-based assistive technology and learning analytics for the education and corporate sectors.  The company has supported 30 million students and employees worldwide with reading, writing and numeracy, as well as productivity challenges, including those with dyslexia or working in a second language. Current customers include some of the largest school districts in North America and Australia, schools and businesses across the UK and Middle East, as well as U.S. Government and Fortune 500 organizations.

Texthelp’s product suite includes its gold-standard literacy and accessibility support software Read&Write; math and science digital product EquatIO; web accessibility toolbar Browsealoud; and digital reading fluency practice and assessment tool Fluency Tutor.  In October, Texthelp also launched WriQ, a cloud-based writing assessment, benchmarking, and achievement tool that provides rapid and consistent feedback using learning analytics, based on analysis of 250,000 teacher-delivered writing assessments.  The company partners with the world’s leading technology brands, including Google, Microsoft and Apple, to deliver solutions that work across all major platforms.

Texthelp has played an important role in supporting the 1.5 billion children whose learning has been disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Texthelp has helped students to avoid further learning loss by providing online products and tools that make remote learning more effective and engaging.  Texthelp workplace products have also helped employees adjust to remote working and have supported businesses in reaching their core audiences at a time when so many aspects of life have been digitized.

Earlier this year, Texthelp appointed its Co-Founder and former CTO, Martin McKay, to lead the company as CEO.  Other senior-level appointments include Ryan Graham to Chief Technical Officer, and Jonny Gribben to Chief Data Officer.

Martin McKay, Founder & CEO, Texthelp said: “We are thrilled and honored to be working with Five Arrows as we enter the next stage of our growth and expansion. We were impressed by their focus on data, software and technology-enabled businesses, and their active supportive approach to scaling businesses. We look forward to releasing two new products this financial year with Five Arrows support as we expand our workplace and education product offerings. We are also grateful to LDC who helped us go further, faster. They believed in the potential of our business, providing the investment, support and expertise to help us accelerate a truly differentiating digital transformation in a relatively short space of time.”

Sacha Oshry, Managing Director at Five Arrows Principal Investments said: “We are absolutely delighted and privileged to be partnering with Martin and his leadership team as Texthelp enters its next stage of growth.  Texthelp is a global market leader with high recurring revenue, a proven track record of organic growth with demonstrable resilience, and significant untapped potential.  We believe that Texthelp’s innovative and high-quality products make the company well-positioned to capitalize from the powerful structural growth trends in the global assistive technology and remote working markets in both the education and corporate sectors.”

Ari Benacerraf, Partner at Five Arrows Capital Partners further commented: “We believe that Texthelp is a highly differentiated SaaS company with a loyal customer base in a rapidly growing sector. Five Arrows has significant experience backing global vertical B2B software businesses and businesses which serve the North American K-12 education sector.  We look forward to supporting Martin and his team to accelerate Texthelp’s growth ambitions over the coming years. This is yet another great example of our US and European corporate private equity teams working collaboratively to invest in companies that stand to directly benefit from the global networks and trans-atlantic synergy that exists across our private equity platform.”  

Texthelp and LDC were advised by DC Advisory (Corporate Finance), Gateley (Legal), Pinsent Masons (Legal) and EY (Personal Tax). Five Arrows was advised by Raymond James (Corporate Finance), Shoosmiths (Legal) and EY-Parthenon (Commercial).

Texthelp Ltd, the global leader in literacy and accessibility technology, today announced a significant investment from Five Arrows, the private equity arm of Rothschild & Co, as it replaces LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group.

Texthelp receives investment from Five Arrows

Press: Texthelp receives investment from Five Arrows

Texthelp Ltd, the global leader in literacy and accessibility technology, today announced a significant investment from Five Arrows, the private equity arm of Rothschild & Co, as it replaces LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group.

Boston, December 16, 2020: Texthelp Ltd, the global leader in literacy and accessibility technology, today announced a significant investment from Five Arrows, the private equity arm of Rothschild & Co, as it replaces LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group. Five Arrows is investing in Texthelp through its European fund (Five Arrows Principal Investments) and its US fund (Five Arrows Capital Partners). Five Arrows targets investments in category-leading B2B data and software companies across healthcare, education, and other vertical end-markets. 

Mark will move into a non-executive director role. Martin previously held the role of Chief Technical Officer at Texthelp, and was a founding member of the business in 1996. He will assume his new position on 1st September 2020.

Founded in 1996, Texthelp has been at the forefront of literacy and numeracy software development  over the last three decades. Its innovative suite of products includes Read&Write, EquatiO, Browsealoud and WriQ which are used in both the education and corporate sectors to help students and employees with reading, writing and numeracy difficulties, including those with dyslexia or working in a second language. The last twelve months has been a period of exponential growth, with new users increasing from 22.2m to 29.7m across the product range. Read&Write alone has 24.9m users worldwide and the addition of new products such as EquatIO and WriQ has made a strong contribution to new user growth, with EquatIO experiencing 63% growth in the last 12 months.

Current customers include some of the largest school districts in North America and Australia, as well as Government and Fortune 500 organisations. The company partners with the world’s leading technology brands including Google, Microsoft and Apple to deliver solutions that work across all major mobile, tablet and computer operating systems.

As market leader, Texthelp has one of the largest data sets that offers insights into learning patterns and behaviours. Working with both educators and its development team, it is able to identify gaps in learning, harnessing data driven insights to iterate existing products, and build new ones in response to user feedback.

Texthelp secured backing from LDC, a leading mid-market private equity investor, in 2019. With LDC’s support, Martin will now lead the company during its next phase of growth focused on realising opportunities in new and existing markets as well as driving new product development, in particular around data analytics.

Martin McKay, CEO Elect said: “I am honoured and excited to lead Texthelp as we enter our next phase of growth. One of Texthelp’s greatest assets is our people and our ability to bring innovative solutions to our customers. We have significant opportunity now as schools and workplaces need literacy and numeracy tools more than ever, and our experience and credibility in the market means we are well positioned to meet this demand.  Mark will certainly be a tough act to follow. Consistently true to his values throughout his tenure at Texthelp, he is a widely respected leader, not just within the company but also across the Assistive Technology industry globally.”

“Martin is a technology visionary as well as a highly respected industry veteran” said Mark McCusker, incumbent CEO. “Part of Texthelp’s DNA, he is the driving force behind the company’s commitment to creating technology which helps everyone reach their full potential. Having worked together for 20 years, I believe that his leadership and global vision is exactly what Texthelp needs as the company enters its next chapter of expanded product innovation and growth, at a time when the digitisation of learning in schools and the workplace is rapidly evolving.”

Chairman, LDC Group

Texthelp appoints CTO and co-founder Martin McKay as CEO

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Read&Write  is a software toolbar with literacy support features designed to help teachers deliver inclusive, personalized learning experiences to all students - and assist every member of the class in meeting their full potential.  

A New Milestone: Read&Write Wins BETT Award 2020!

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LDC are very supportive of how we do things here at Texthelp, our approach to innovation and our commitment to delivering the very best customer experience. 

For the past 20 years, Delta Partners have provided investment support to Texthelp. However, as our company grows and as we begin the next phase of our development plans, the time is right to seek new investors to work with. We have taken the time to look for the right partner, one who is aligned with our mission, vision and culture.  

Texthelp announce new investment partnership with LDC

On behalf of everyone at Texthelp, I’m very happy to announce this morning that we have secured new investment in our company. Our new investors are LDC, the investment arm of Lloyds Bank. 

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