John Danner
Founder of Spark Space
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Co-Founder
2025 - Current
Building a school network from the ground up using AI.
Lecturer
2024
I teach Lean Launchpad for Education one quarter each year with Jennifer Carolan.
Co-Founder and Chairman
2024
We are using AI to help kids be great writers.
Co-Founder and Chairman
2023
Our AI co-teacher creates decodable stories for students to practice reading at their current decoding level, including mistakes from past levels in each story. Students then read to us and we give feedback on their decoding mistakes. Project Read is used every week by over 25,000 teachers.
Angel Investor
2018
Investor in over 60 companies focused on the future of learning and work in the AI age. Investments include Synthesis, Primer, Outschool, Maven, and SchoolAI.
Co-Founder and CEO
2013 - 2018
Solving Bloom's 2 Sigma Problem by combining machine learning and live coaches to reduce the cost of K-12 math tutoring from $50/hr to $1/hr with better results than legacy tutoring. Sold June 2018 to The Academy Group.
Co-Founder and CEO
2005 - 2013
Rocketship Education is the leading blended school system in the United States, combining online and classroom instruction. When i left in 2013, Rocketship was serving 3500 students in 7 schools and were the highest performing low-income school system in California. Because of its unique model, Rocketship is the first scalable charter school system, growing at 50% annually for the past five years. They pay and support their teachers significantly more than traditional non-blended schools. Their mission is to eliminate the achievement gap in our lifetimes.
Public school teacher
2002 - 2005
I taught for three years in traditional public schools. my first position was as a fifth grade teacher serving a 98% poverty predominantly african-american student body and the last two years as a second grade teacher in a high poverty school serving mostly immigrant students from many countries. If you haven't taught, you should.
Co-founder and CEO
1995 - 1999
NetGravity built software to manage Internet advertising for the world's largest media companies and web sites. We took the company public in June of 1998 and sold it to DoubleClick in October of 1999. My role was to try to keep the roller coaster on the tracks during this amazing ride.
Software Engineer
1994 - 1995
Built the "Navigator" system (the way people accessed the system) for the Time Warner Full Service Network.
Silicon Graphics provides workstations for conceptual design analysis and simulation of 3D objects.
Education
Distinguished Careers Institute
2022 - 2022
M.S.
1991 - 1992
B.S.
1985 - 1988
M. Ed.
2001 - 2002
HS
1980 - 1984