Dunce Deals #19 - Ender, TeamLift, and Baltu
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
Every once in a while I read a book that becomes one of the core books I read and re-read every year or two. The Singularity is Near, Thinking in Bets, Hooked, Thinking Fast and Slow, Superforecasting, and Zero to One are on that list. Working Backwards is this year’s addition. I’m truly amazed that Amazon allowed this book to be published. It has such great detail about the structure and processes they use to out-innovate everyone else. Here is my book review, focused on the lessons that founders can use right now.
Deals
Ender
Description: Coding and design competitions for high schoolers sponsored by tech companies
Website: joinender.com
Founder: gautam bhargava
LinkedIn: NA
Email: g@explorewithbloom.com
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: Increasingly, I think that high school is a waste of time. It’s kind of a four year march of death that assumes you want to go to college. Our education system doesn’t adapt well, so it’s likely we aren’t going to move on from high school any time soon. Gautam is a step ahead, helping high school students invest their time and energy in building things, getting noticed, and some day getting jobs in tech right out of high school.
TeamLift
Description: TeamLift helps companies build a skills-based management system for their employees.
Website: teamlift.co
Founder: Bozhanka Vitanova
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bozhanka-vitanova
Email: bozhanka@teamlift.co
Deck: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xYNsJ5oItwu_NLSnln63bh06647AgxTx/view?usp=sharing
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: Bozhanka has the right background for this HR-focused startup. It’s not an area I get excited about or understand, but judging by my fellow judges reactions on edpitches, this is a thing!
Baltu
Description: Just in Time training for frontline workers
Website: baltutech.com
Founder: Peter Costa
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteycosta
Email: peter@baltutech.com
Deck: https://docsend.com/view/gbis9ii3wr75pmgq
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: I like this idea a lot. Peter is focused on factory workers working with robots in his first couple of pilots, but I can imagine this training on the fly working in a lot of retail and other situations as more.
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