Dunce Deals #18 - Miter, Poliglota, AI Camp
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 Maven. Before Dunce, I founded three companies, NetGravity (IPO), Rocketship Public Schools (12k students) and Zeal (sold 2018).
Thoughts
We are definitely somewhere near peak market. I have at least one company a week now receiving an obscene pre-emptive Series A offer. Having lived through a few market cycles, this always makes me happy for my founders, though I try to caution them that it’s incredibly easy after a peak to have a down round even when you’ve made great progress. So pay more attention to those terms right now, and think about the way to message that to the company now so you don’t have to apologize later. But while the music is playing, we all have to keep dancing.
My piece this week is called The HR Bogeyman, and talks about what a lot of my companies in training and upskilling are seeing now as enterprise adapts to new approaches.
News
I’m really proud of Major League Hacking, who is making great progress on diversity among the fellows they place with companies. Here’s a great piece on what they are doing.
Deals
Miter
Description: With Miter, meetings are productive and deliver meaningful outcomes. Plus, better meetings equals fewer meetings: less video, more getting stuff done.
Website: miter.co
Founder: Dave Feldman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davefeldman
Email: dave@miter.co
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: I will admit that I hate meetings. I don’t mind my 1-1’s getting pitches and talking to my founders, but once you get past three or so people, they really suck, whether in person or online. Miter is trying to make them suck less, which I really appreciate!
Poliglota
Description: Learn English in small groups with great coaches (based in Chile)
Website: poliglota.org
Founder: Nicolás Fuenzalida Plaza
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasfuenzalida/
Email: nicolas@poliglota.org
Stage: Seed
Raising: Yes
Deck: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q_JdqjglIE3Qvyk2faECqEbi5zqBXGHQ/view?usp=sharing
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: This is a company I wanted to love, and some of you may love. They do group conversations online with an instructor similar to language schools. I have been looking for years for a company that figures out how to build a social network for language learning. This is not it, unfortunately, but they have a good price point and big demand for people learning English in LatAm.
AI Camp
Description: An intensive AI learning experience for students age 13-18
Website: ai-camp.org
Founder: Michael Ke Ke Zhang
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkezhang
Email: michael@ai-camp.org
Stage: Seed
Raising: No
Current Dunce Investment: Yes
Notes: Michael is a physics phD teaching teens AI. As with many learning businesses, the move online is a big change and allowed for a lot more scale.