Procuit

(Post: English)
"Companies regularly shell out big bucks for employees to attend professional training seminars. But research shows employees forget 80% of what they learn within a month of the event."

Software developer and serial entrepreneur Tom Meloche, 46, a figure within the agile development community who has taught corporate seminars since the late 1980s, is trying to change that.

Building on clinical research on human cognition, his Ann Arbor (Mich.) company makes software designed to increase knowledge retention by customizing lessons based on an individual user's responses.

Meloche says students who use the software need to study only three to five minutes three to four days a week in order to recall material over an extended period.

His team is also writing algorithms meant to determine the most important information for students to learn in the first place.

So far, five-person Procuit, founded in 2007, has created a test app for Facebook (over 10,000 people have used it), landed one commercial customer for custom work, and launched a home-schooling application, HomeSchoolAdvantage.com (which charges $20 per user), in August.

Meloche says Procuit recently received a $50,000 unsecured loan from a local incubator to develop and market the home-schooling product.

He expects just under $100,000 in revenue in 2009 and around $500,000 in 2010.

Source: BusinessWeek