Edsby Co-founder and President John Myers.

Edsby has won first place in Backbone Magazine’s second-annual Backbone Start Me Up Innovation Campaign.

As the magazine noted, Edsby won on the strength of its product proposition, and perhaps a dose of personality.

John Myers, president of Edsby, was widely considered by the judges to have “outpitched” his competitors … He painted a strong picture of the challenge school boards face with outdated communications between parents and teachers, and said cloud-based solutions could solve this problem. “We did some fundamental research and in talking to school boards and teachers, we found things work the same way they did when I was in school in the ’60s: paper in the backpack is still the primary form of communication,” Myers said during his pitch. “We came to the conclusion that teachers keep the three-ring binder companies in business these days, and even teachers who are tech savvy and try to do interesting collaborative things…are still pretty low tech.”

Read the full article here.