We were delighted to receive this exciting news from Michael Rihani, Chief Strategy Officer at Koofers, a former member company colleague at VT KnowledgeWorks, and an early supporter of Handshake 2.0.

Dear Handshake 2.0,

What started out as a simple "level the playing field" idea out of my Virginia Tech dorm room (specifically, 313 Vawter Hall), Koofers - a Blacksburg-created term and tradition - has seen incredible nationwide growth (300,000+ students use the service).

A few days ago we closed a $5 million investment round.

Steve Case tweeted to his 362,000+ followers about us.

We will be announcing some exciting news next week in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Regards,
Michael

P.S. - All 3 co-founders attended Virginia Tech: Glynn LoPresti (ISE '95), Patrick Gartlan (CS '07), and Michael Rihani (BIT '08).

Congratulations, Michael!

You can read more about the Koofers $5 million investment story on TechCrunch and TechJournal South.

You're invited to read more about Koofers on Handshake 2.0. 

VT KnowledgeWorks is a client of Handshake Media, Incorporated, parent company of Handshake 2.0.

From Facebook Developers, 10/15/08:

"We are thrilled to announce our top 25 recipients from round one of the fbFund Developer Competition. After poring through and carefully evaluating over 600 applications, we decided that these 25 teams have tremendous talent and great potential.The mission of fbFund is to identify talent and seed innovation on Facebook Platform."

On that list of 25 recipients selected from over 600 applications?!

Koofers - Koofers helps students create and share information that helps with classes. Users can share old tests, quizzes, and study guides; view current and past grade breakdown and average GPA for every class and professor; review professors and read ratings before signing up for new classes, and get help from other students in the same class.

What happens next?

From now through the beginning of November, each recipient will develop and submit their final applications and create a video showcasing their work, which you can watch on the fbFund Page. Around mid-November, we'll start soliciting our users to help us select the five finalists. Users will have the chance to try these applications, watch the videos and vote for their favorites. Final judging of round two will factor in user voting, as well as input from Facebook, Accel Partners and Founders Fund. Once round two closes in December, we will announce our five finalists, each of which will receive up to an additional $225,000 in funding.

Congratulations to Michael Rihani, co-founder of Koofers.com!  Best of luck in round two!

Koofers.com is a member company of business acceleration center VT KnowledgeWorks, located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, a technology park, a research park, and a science park on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia.  The research park provides high-technology companies access to university faculty, university facilities, university equipment, and business-related support services.  The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center fosters commercialization and technology transfer of university research for both high-tech start-up companies and established technology businesses.

Handshake 2.0 congratulates Michael Rihani, co-founder of Koofers.com (Koofers, Inc.), for his recognition as one of the Blue Ridge Business Journal's "20 under 40 of the Blue Ridge Region's up-and-coming business leaders."

You can meet Michael Rihani, President & CEO of Koofers.com (Koofers, Inc.), at the NewVa Tech Expo.

We learned about his company, Koofers.com, here on Handshake 2.0.

From Michael Rihani himself:

"Blacksburg + Virginia Tech + football = glorious day!"

"Whether I’m tailgating for aHokie football game, celebrating with the Hokie bird himself, or just playing pickup football on the Drillfield with some friends - it’s what I truly love about the town of Blacksburg, VA (not to mention the great businesses, people, weather, nature & trails, food & drink, Smart Roads, and overall - great time)."

If you want to join a game of pickup football or do business with Koofers.com, feel free to contact:

Michael Rihani
President & CEO
Koofers.com
michael@koofers.com

You can meet Michael Rihani, President & CEO of Koofers.com (Koofers, Inc.), at the NewVa Tech Expo.

Here's more about his company, Koofers.com, from the company's history on CrunchBase:

"Koofers.com provides an interactive community that serves the academic needs of college students through information sharing. Students benefit from collaboration with their peers and the experiences of former students. Many helpful services span the entire academic calendar from course selection through final exams, and include collaborative note taking, course & instructor ratings/grade distributions, and an online library for sharing past exams & study materials."

Michael Rihani includes on CrunchBase this bit of history for Virginia Tech fans of terms like Hokie:

"Unique to Virginia Tech is the word 'coofer' that was coined in the early 1940s to refer to tests or homework completed in an earlier course that is available to students taking the course later, and used as a means of studying or preparing. The term originated at Bluefield College, a former extension branch of VPI, and is likely derived from the word 'coffer' (synonym for a strongbox). A student from Bluefield College transferred to the Virginia Tech - Blacksburg campus and first introduced the term. It is often used as a verb in such constructions as 'to coofer a problem,' also sometimes spelled 'koofer.'”

Koofers.com was featured as one of nine LaunchBox award-winning start-ups in this 8/5/08 post on TechCrunch.

And you can watch a demonstration video of how Koofers.com works.

For more information, please contact:

Michael Rihani
President & CEO
Koofers.com
michael@koofers.com

This post originally appeared on Inside VT KnowledgeWorks, 6/3/08.

News from Michael Rihani, co-founder of Koofers.com:

Here’s a quick description of our website, just so you know some more:

Koofers.com provides an interactive community that serves the academic needs of college students through information sharing.  Students benefit from collaboration with their peers and the experiences of former students.  Many helpful services span the entire academic calendar from course selection through final exams, and include collaborative note-taking, course and instructor ratings/grade distributions, and an online library for sharing past exams and study materials.

We started at Virginia Tech and have over 14,000 VT students using the website within our first year and a half in operation.

We just launched at the end of the school year at the University of Maryland, College Park and were featured on the front page of their school newspaper or you can see the newspaper article in "real newspaper" .pdf format.

In the first week, we received over 1,000 UMD students registering/using our service!

Koofers.com is a member company of high-tech business accelerator VT KnowledgeWorks, located at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, Virginia.