Dunce Deals #11 - One Classroom, Skale, Greenfig
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’m about to head back to the Bay Area after a couple of great months on the beach. Here is my view as I write this week’s newsletter:
Next week, when I write this in the Bay Area, my view will look like this:
Anyway, all good things must come to an end. Soon I will be gardening again, which is always good.
News
GetSetUp is taking care of older adults nationwide by offering group classes to provide the information they need to get their vaccines. If you know anyone who wants to help older adults get the information they need, share GetSetUp's sessions: getsetup.org/vaccine
EdPitches
We launched a new weekly clubhouse for founders in edtech and future of work to pitch the main group of seed-funding VCs for our space. Our first was last week and was really fun. Hope you can join us next week Thursday 4p Pacific Time. Check out @edpitches on twitter for updated information and here is this week’s clubhouse event. My friend Jennifer Carolan from Reach Capital will be hosting this one because I will be in the air on the way back to pandemic central. Skale, featured in this week’s deals, was one of the presenters last week and did a great job!
Deals
One Classroom
Description: A marketplace for teachers to create and exchange modern online lessons and assessments.
Website: positivephysics.org (demo lesson)
Founder: jack replinger
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-replinger-447290b7/
Email: jreplinger@gmail.com
Stage: Idea
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: As most of you know, I don’t invest in school sales companies, but since I know a lot of people on this list do, I wanted to share this one. Jack is a former physics teacher and lived the problem he is solving. There are other platforms for this, but teacher to teacher is an awfully great model for growth.
Skale
Description: Connect your team to discuss meaningful topics and build your internal culture through impactful one-hour summits. (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
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: I don’t usually get excited about inside the firewall corporate learning and development, but skale is a particularly beautiful app for facilitating conversations that seems like it has found a great place in the world of remote work.
Greenfig
Description: non-coding tech career bootcamp in partnership with universities
Website: greenfig.com
Founder: Sara Leoni
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sleoni
Email: sara.leoni@greenfig.com
Stage: Seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: I care a lot about this area, because if we don’t figure out how to move 30m or so folks into tech in the next couple of decades, we may be in civil war. Of course I love coding, and clearly there is lots of demand there, but a lot of those 30m are going to be non-coders doing marketing, business operations and many other things. Greenfig runs a $1500 10 week bootcamp to get people started on that path.