Dunce Deals 10/9/20 - Gather and Woolf
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
News
A couple nice rounds for the Dunce portfolio this week ---
Congrats to Sora Schools, a Dunce idea stage investment, for raising a $2.7m seed round from some great members of the Dunce Deals Family - USV, Village Global, ReThink Education, Peak State Ventures, and Taylor Greene.
Congrats to Cris and the LingoKids team for their huge growth this year and $10m Series B round.
Deals
On to the deals! Sticking with the two deal a week theme, here are two I liked. Let me know if you would like a warm connection, or just tell them I sent you (or not!).
Gather
Description: Senior-focused lifelong learning community.
Website: gotgather.com
Founder: Alex Avery
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-avery-52a1a424
Email: alex@gotgather.com
Stage: Seed
Raising: Yes
Dunce Deal: No
I was so proud that we had managed to keep GetSetup quiet as it built an amazing product for seniors for the last 18 months. Gather is the first credible competitor in my opinion. It is awesome that two top-notch companies are finally focusing on the one billion seniors in the world.
Woolf
Description: Woolf is building SaaS tools to make it 10x cheaper and easier to organize existing instructional content and automatically create online classes.
Website: woolf.university
Founder: Joshua Broggi
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-broggi
Email: joshua@woolf.university
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Dunce Deal: No
Joshua and Woolf are very contrarian. Online program managers (OPMs) like 2U and Noodle dominate the online higher ed space. There is technology in these companies, but it's all bundled into big service agreements. Joshua wants to build a technology layer to help colleges and individual professors build accredited courses easily at SaaS prices. It is very early and he is in search of a business model, but I’m rooting for him.
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.