Dunce Deals 10/23/20: Chatable and Bumo
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).
***** Before substack, Dunce Deals was just a normal email message to my friends. All of the dated dunce deals are reprints from those emails.
Thoughts
happy post-debate day! I’m not sure if that is even a thing, but it makes me happy that we won’t be having any more of those. Like many investors, I’ve kept my methodology hidden away as if it was rocket science. But I’ve realized that the world will be a better place if all of our startup tricks become common knowledge, so I’m starting to open source what I know. Every week, I’m going to try to leak a bit out. Here is this week’s piece titled PMF is the Founder’s Marshmallow Test. I hope you enjoy it, or save it for bedtime so it can achieve some purpose.
News
Congrats to GetSetup for bringing 2.5 million seniors from the state of Michigan onto its learning platform.
Deals
Chatable
Description: A device for augmented hearing, focusing initially on helping correct ADHD and Autism, and ultimately augmenting everyone's auditory perception. Founders are experts in auditory neuroscience and deep learning.
Website: chatableapps.com
Founder: Giles Tongue
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilestongue/
Email: giles@chatableapps.com
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Dunce Deal: No
Notes: I try to stay even keel on these, but Chatable pretty much blew me away. The idea that we could have a wearable in our ear that modifies auditory input in real time to create better focus, fewer distractions and a variety of other effects, is pretty incredible. The technical co-founder Andy is so deep in this. I probed hard to make sure they really have to build hardware, and they really think they do, so this is not a deal I’ve got the capital to do. But if you have the stomach for hardware and the capital to back it up, this is a meeting worth taking.
Bumo
Description: Live online small group classes for 2-6 year olds.
Website: bumobrain.com
Founder: Joan Nguyen
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannguyen/
Email: joan@hellobumo.com
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Dunce Deal: No
What would it be like if there was a week without a new live online kids product :) Chriselle, one of the founders, has enormous consumer and social experience and over 1m followers. I’m happy to have them pushing on this, because changing parent behavior to think about buying subscriptions for live learning requires this kind of skill set.
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.