Keith Schacht

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Keith Schacht
Keith Schacht.jpg
Born (1979-12-09) 9 December 1979 (age 45)
United States
Alma mater University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Known forMystery Science
TED Conference
Facebook
SpousePari Schacht

Keith Schacht (born 9 December 1979) is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. [1] He is the CEO and co-founder of Mystery Science and is on the board of directors for eSpark Learning. [2] Schacht is a named inventor on 9 patents. [3] Early in his career he was named one of the top 20 entrepreneurs under 25 by BusinessWeek. [4] He has been a speaker at the TED Conference and has been featured in TheWall Street Journal, [5] Forbes , [6] Fortune , [7] and Wired . [8]

Contents

Career

Schacht's first company, founded while in college, was Lever Works, a custom software development shop. It was co-founded with Brian Witlin and Zach Kaplan. In December 2001 Lever Works was sold to Leo Media for an undisclosed sum. [9]

In 2002, Schacht co-founded Inventables, [10] a company that educates companies about new materials and technologies. The company was featured in numerous publications including Forbes in 2006 [6] and Wired in 2007. He also gave a talk on "Toys from the Future" [11] at the TED Conference in 2005.

In 2007, Schacht founded Crafted Fun, an early company building applications on the Facebook platform. Crafted Fun raised funding from Apex Ventures and Naval Ravikant. [12] The company developed a range of Facebook applications including Grow-a-Gift which was cited as a top application used by millions of people. [13]

In 2010, Schacht joined Facebook as a product manager and launched an updated version of News Feed in 2011. [14] [15] [16] He left the company in 2012. During his time at Facebook he was a named inventor on 9 patents. [3]

In 2013, Schacht co-founded Mystery Science with Doug Peltz. Mystery Science creates open-and-go lessons for elementary teachers and helps them teach science without requiring a background in science. [17] A couple notable interviews with Y Combinator, one of their investors, detailed an unconventional business model in which the company sold to schools and districts across the United States without a sales team. [18] [19] Mystery Science has grown to be the most widely used science resource in American elementary schools; it is used by more than 50% of elementary schools reaching more than four million children each month. [20] In 2020 Mystery Science was acquired by Discovery Education for $140 million. [21] [22] Schacht is listed as the majority shareholder at the time of acquisition. [23]

Investments

Schacht is an investor in at least 25 private companies and numerous public companies. Notable investments include investing in Boom Supersonic, Credit Karma, Canva, Epic!, AngelList, OpenGov, Square (pre-IPO), Tesla (pre-IPO), and Facebook (pre-IPO). [24]

References

  1. ↑ "Facebook - Keith Schacht". Facebook . 25 December 2020.
  2. ↑ "LinkedIn - Keith Schacht".
  3. 1 2 "Keith Schacht Inventions, Patents and Patent Applications". 25 December 2020.
  4. ↑ "Entrepreneurs: Cream of the Young Crop". 28 December 2005. Archived from the original on 2 November 2005.
  5. ↑ Gamerman, Ellen (2020). "What to Let the Kids Watch When You're All Stuck at Home". Wall Street Journal.
  6. 1 2 Lambert, Emily (2006). "Gadgets to Go". Forbes . Archived from the original on 15 June 2006.
  7. ↑ Julie Schlosser (1 November 2004). "Inside-the-box Thinking".
  8. ↑ Betsy Schiffman (22 May 2008). "Facebook To Go Under the Knife".
  9. ↑ Lueken, Abbie (6 June 2005). "Student Entrepreneurs Make Dreams a Reality". Archived from the original on 18 July 2011.
  10. ↑ Schacht, Keith. "Keith Schacht | Speaker | TED". www.ted.com. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
  11. ↑ "Toys from the Future". 2008.
  12. ↑ "Keynote Speakers". 2010. Archived from the original on 26 September 2011.
  13. ↑ Farmer, Jesse (2007). "Hottest Facebook Apps".
  14. ↑ Parr, Ben (2011). "Facebook Changes News Feed So You Never Miss Vital Updates". Mashable .
  15. ↑ Swartz, Jon (2011). "Facebook, Google+ announce new features". ABC News .
  16. ↑ Taylor, Colleen (2011). "Facebook wants to be the newspaper of your dreams". Archived from the original on 24 January 2013.
  17. ↑ "Mystery Science Helps Teachers Dazzle Their Students With Interactive Science Classes". Forbes . 17 August 2017.
  18. ↑ "Cost vs Quality in Edtech – Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston". 6 April 2018.
  19. ↑ "Keith Schacht and Doug Peltz on What Traction Feels Like – at YC Edtech Night". 27 November 2017.
  20. ↑ "Mystery.org".
  21. ↑ Tony Wan (3 November 2020). "Discovery Education Acquires Mystery Science in $140 Million Deal".
  22. ↑ Stephen Wakefield (30 October 2020). "Discovery Education Acquires Mystery Science".
  23. ↑ "Team – Mystery". Archived from the original on 27 December 2020. Retrieved 26 December 2020.
  24. ↑ "Keith Schacht – AngelList".
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