Rafter
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Rafter was an education-technology company spun out of textbook-rental startup BookRenter in 2012. Its cloud-based Course Materials Network helped colleges manage the cost and distribution of course materials: Rafter Discover let educators compare and review textbooks, and Rafter360 bundled textbook costs into tuition as a flat fee so every student had materials on day one. It partnered with more than 500 schools and owned BookRenter.com.
02 / Rafter FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Rafter's 'all-inclusive materials solution' never reached the scale it needed. Only a little over a dozen colleges — mostly smaller ones — signed on. Selling a single-source model to an entire institution was a complicated buying decision that professors saw as a threat to faculty independence; some students protested, feeling they could find better deals on their own. Meanwhile, larger universities like Indiana built equivalent programs in-house, removing the need for a middleman. The company shut down abruptly in October 2016, giving customers as little as two days' notice.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Launch
Textbook-rental company BookRenter launched Rafter as a course materials management network for colleges, with BookRenter continuing as a division.
- Rafter360
Rafter introduced its textbooks-in-tuition service, bundling course material costs into a flat student fee; pilots reported savings of about 50%.
- Shutdown
Rafter abruptly shut down in October 2016, leaving college customers scrambling for alternatives on a few days' notice.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Rafter raised more than $86 million in funding over its lifetime.
- 02
Its all-inclusive service was adopted by only a little over a dozen colleges, mostly smaller institutions — too little scale to sustain the business.
- 03
The company shut down abruptly in October 2016; some customers received only two days' notice.