Photo courtesy of Georgetown University

Todd Cofer has a passion for education and wants to change the world. In his efforts, he combines education and technology to “reinvent the report card” in Bookend Technology. His startup’s goal is to allow parents to monitor their child’s academic progress as teachers input students’ grades using Bookend’s system throughout the year.

“What we’re trying to do is use the power of a number of technologies – cloud technologies, business intelligence technologies – to increase transparency between the classroom and the living room,” Cofer explains. “It’s a relationship that the schools start and then they provide it as a free tool to parents of students who attend that school.”

For teachers, Bookend wants the process of reporting students’ grades to be simple.

“Our systems all tie seamlessly into the systems schools are already using to grade. So we aren’t adding processes for the teacher to go through. We want to save them time,” he says.

Cofer is finishing up his master’s degree in technology management at Georgetown University. Bookend started as a simple idea developed throughout his graduate studies. “Every class that I’ve done, I’ve used Bookend as some aspect of a project,” he says.

He entered Bookend in a few business startup contests. But it wasn’t until winning the commercial track of the Hoya Challenge, Georgetown’s annual entrepreneur competition, that he achieved one of his early wins: $5,000 that has helped him further develop his venture with two part-time colleagues. Bookend currently has a pilot program with two schools in the Washington, D.C.-area.

Cofer continues to be busy these days, but he took some time before he presented the final project of his graduate career (Bookend, of course) to chat about his startup, life before becoming an entrepreneur and why he loves the D.C.-area.

Hometown: Marco Island, Fla. – our claim to fame is it’s the largest island in the Everglades

When did you come to the D.C.-area?
Originally, I came here in 2004 for a college internship on Capitol Hill, then I came back in 2008 for another internship on the Hill. I moved here permanently with my wife in 2010.

What’s the best part of the D.C.-area?
Its convenience; coming from Florida where you have to drive 20 minutes to get any where, you can now walk to Starbucks or to the bank.

Why did you start Bookend Technology?
I’ve been in the front lines of technology and education for the past five years at Gartner [an information technology research] firm where I came from. On top of that, I’ve been a big brother in a big brother, big sister program. So I’ve seen what technology sticks and what goes by the wayside. I saw this huge gap and the tools we use today are nonexistent or difficult to use so that people don’t use them.

What did you do before Bookend?
It was in a sales capacity at Gartner.

What’s the biggest challenge of being an entrepreneur?
Overcoming the fear of failure; you learn way more than if you were to just stick with the corporate gig because it’s easy to get comfortable with making money and living the life you want to live

Most rewarding?
So far, the Hoya Challenge. I was told “no” all the way to when I was told “yes.”

Parting thoughts?
Umm…let me give you some cheesy ones. See which ones you want – think big, change the world.

Come on!
Not one person can fix these problems. But at least you can start provoking ideas on how [these issues that we’re tackling today] can be solved. I challenge everybody to take that into their own context. Even if you take it on as a pet project, just get involved and see what happens. Chances are, good things will come out.