Dunce Deals #10 - Torre, Harness, Resilia

Hi, I'm John Danner, Managing Director of Dunce Capital.  Dunce Deals is my look at the most interesting deals and news from edtech and the future of work.  In the last four years, I have made over two dozen pre-seed investments in the space including Lambda School, where I am on the board, Outschool, Prenda, and Contra.  Before Dunce, I founded three companies, NetGravity (IPO), Rocketship Public Schools (12k students) and Zeal (sold 2018).

Thoughts

I hope you are doing well and your senior family members are getting vaccinated! Mine have and it’s a big relief. Here is the fifth in the PMF series, this one about growth loops.

News

Congratulations to GetSetup, featured in the New York Times a couple of days ago for their amazing work creating a live social network for seniors.

Congratulations to FourthRev on their latest round, led by our friends at Reach!

Deals

Torre

Description: the new professional network for remote and flexible work

Website: torre.co

Founder: Justin Petsche

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinpetsche

Email: justin@torre.co

Stage: Pre-seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: While I’m an investor in Contra and can’t invest here, I do think that companies working at the new seam created by remote work and the changes it will cause to recruiting are very interesting.

Harness

Description: LinkedIn for Founders

Website: joinharness.com

Founder: Jeremy Hammer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhammer90

Email: jeremy@joinharness.com

Stage: Pre-seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: Harness is creating a social network that makes it much easier for founders to build their teams. Initially they are focused on university incubation programs as a way of building up the network.

Resilia

Description: Lambda for Brazil

Website: resilia.work

Founder: Bruno Cani Stussi Neves

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruno-cani-st%C3%BCssi-neves-7ab9ab34/

Email: bruno@resilia.com.br

Stage: Seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: When I had initially spoken to Bruno a year ago, he was pretty intent, like most were, that his schools needed to be in the physical world. Covid changed that, online has worked beautifully and he’s doubling down. He’s in his 7th cohort now in a large country with an acute shortage of Portuguese speaking developers.