Dunce Deals #12 - Greenfig, Thimble, Moonrise

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

Increasingly, I am pushing all of my first looks to the @EdPitches room in clubhouse that we do every Thursday. I’m joined there by my friends from Reach, Rethink, GSV, Learn Start, Cowboy, and Owl to hear all of the interesting pre-seed and seed deals in 15 minute pitches. I think it’s just better. For the founder, they can talk to all of the major funds in one place. For me, I would rather find founders that I think I can help rather than differentiate myself by my sourcing. Clubhouse just makes the experience frictionless.

News

Austen is now so confident in the Lambda fellowship program that he’s not only paying for the one month engineering fellowship at companies, but will donate $2000 to the company’s favorite charity if they don’t hire the intern. I know the placement rate, and it’s a lot less risky than it sounds. Seriously, give this a try at your company or your portfolio companies. It just turns out that resume + interview = bias. Lambda is changing that every day now by showing companies that candidates with alternative backgrounds can show up, write good code, take initiative, and work well with a team. This is a big change in hiring behavior.

Contra.com is now live! Instead of resume’s, people post the projects they’ve worked on and link to all of the people they collaborated with on the project. This is another great way to #DumpResumes. And congrats to the team on their Series A raise!

Deals

This week, every single deal is a clubhouse @edpitches pitch!

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: OK, yes, I’m pummeling you with Greenfig, but they won the @edpitches competition yesterday and are now an automatic finalist in GSV’s startup competition, so I can’t leave them out!

Moonrise

Description: Co-learning spaces for kids.

Website: moonrise.com

Founder: Chris Turner

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

Email: chris@moonrise.com

Stage: Pre-seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: Many of my companies in k-12 are either partnering with care providers or building their own microschools to give parents some time to relax. Moonrise wants to build the best co-learning spaces and parents can drop their kids off any time for $250/mo.

Thimble

Description: Thimble is a STEM subscription box and online video platform that teaches kids a basic understanding of robotics, coding, and engineering through weekly camps, hands-on kits, and live online classes.

Website: thimble.io

Founder: Oscar Pedroso

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

Email: oscar@thimble.io

Stage: Pre-seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: While I will admit that hardware scares me, I do love the combination of a subscription box with weekly live classes because it offloads the responsibility from parents.