Dunce Deals 10/2/20 - Skale and Lounge
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 Supernow. Before Dunce, I founded three companies, NetGravity (IPO), Rocketship Public Schools (12k students) and Zeal (sold 2018).
Thoughts
Happy 199th day of lockdown for those of you in Palo Alto. And the smoke is back!
News
In the meantime, in the education world, our big event every year is thrown by GSV. It's basically like rolling YC/500 Startups/TechStars demo days and Goldman/Morgan conferences all in one! Lots of my portfolio spoke, and this year, one of my companies, Abwaab, the leaders in test prep in Jordan, won the 200+ company startup competition. Congrats guys! Here is their quick pitch.
For those of you looking to make fun of my moderating skills, here is Amir from Outschool, Kelly from Prenda, Ryan from Primer, Garrett from Sora, and Vlad from GalileoXP talking about how Covid has impacted k12 and the way parents think about their options.
Deals
On to the deals! Once again only two I think are worthy of your time, but both interesting so enjoy and let me know if I can connect you. I'm happy to do it. And please do send deals my way, some of the best deals you've seen here have come from members of Dunce Deals.
Skale
Description: Skale drives better onboarding and retention at companies by facilitating structured one on one conversations between team members (and the app is beautiful)
Website: theskale.com
Founder: Ben Chang
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/retinagel
Email: ben@theskale.com
Stage: Pre-Seed
Raising: Yes
Dunce Deal: No
Notes: I'm almost as big a fan of peer to peer learning as I am of live learning, because done the right way, it's highly engaging. I think Skale is onto something really unique here. They are still early, but there are so many areas this kind of structured interaction could be great. Have them give you a demo, it's worth the cost of admission.
Lounge
Description: Lounge is an open team space designed to simplify chance meetings
Website: producthunt.com
Founder: Alex Kwon
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexyoungkwon/
Email: alex@originofx.co
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Dunce Deal: No
Notes: Huddle and others are off and running in this space, but Alex is a very compelling founder with a great design eye, working to come up with a new metaphor for company employees to engage remotely.
Here is the complete list of Dunce Investments:
Mystery Science - purchased by Discovery Education 2020
Swing - on-demand talent for the education market
Epic! - the best children’s books digitally for every classroom and every home
Kunduz - the leader in test prep for Turkey
Erudifi - loans for students going to vocational schools and higher ed in SE Asia.
Outschool - the best marketplace of live small classes for your k-12 student
Juni - Coding, Math, and English instruction 1-1 and small group
Lambda School - teaching students to code and get jobs in great companies
LingoKids - English learning for young children
Padlet - a modern document creation and sharing platform
TinyCare - micro-daycare centers
SV Academy - teaching students tech sales and getting them jobs in great companies
Sora - a better high school, completely online
Prenda - micro-schools to unlock your child’s talent
Galileo - the first online world school
Beanstalk - live classes for young children
GetSetup - live social network for seniors
Primer - live academic and social network for homeschoolers
Contra - social network for freelancers
Fourthrev - run digital bootcamps for universities focused on in-demand job skills
Marketerhire - marketing experts from that you can rent
Abwaab - the best test prep platform in MENA
Supernow - live classes and clubs for elementary and middle schoolers
Maven - the leader in cohort-based courses
Prendea - live classes and social network for students in LatAm
Kritik - peer grading for higher ed
Major League Hacking - hackathons and fellowships for university students
Reforge - live classes on Growth for upskilling professionals
Synthesis School - learn problem-solving by playing video games
AI Camp - AI for ages 13-18 from Stanford pHDs.
Bindr - Silent study groups online.
The Explanation Company - Google for kids.