Dunce Deals #24 - School of Humanity, Brite, and Skills Union
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
I’m headed out to Hawaii with family for a couple of weeks, so sorry I won’t be crowding your inbox until July. Let’s hear it for no masks, no limits, in California! I almost felt like a criminal walking into Whole Foods without a mask yesterday.
This week, I wrote 10 Little Bugs about the things I notice as founders transition from pre-PMF to post-PMF.
News
Congrats to LingoKids, for their mega-round of funding. Who knew that language learning would turn out to be such a big thing :)
After spending about six months figuring out how to build great fellowships, Lambda is hitting the gas. Here is their new Lambda Pods program, focused on helping startups both get work done and hire awesome and diverse new engineers without all of the heavy management lift.
Finally, congrats to Contra on their new research report. They are documenting a cultural phenomenon as thousands of tech folks side hustle and eventually quit their jobs in order to become independents, working when they want. This is one of the greatest things that Covid has accelerated.
Deals
School of Humanity
Description: A progressive online high school.
Website: sofhumanity.com
Founder: Raya Bidshahri
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rayabidshahri
Email: raya@sofhumanity.com
Stage: Idea
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Deck: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11BLcLyBxDr4u7-wjr1sgDjBK6cYOz5x8/view?usp=sharing
Notes: Raya is very impressive. She’s based in Dubai and building an online high school from first principles. She launches in August, so it’s early, but it feels to me like MENA is a much better place to innovate on high schools. She’s exploring enterprise and government partnerships as well as consumer student acquisition.
Brite
Description: The operating system for STEM academies.
Website: https://gobrite.io
Founder: Dmitry Litvinov
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmitrylitvinov/
Email: dmitry@gobrite.io
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Deck: https://brite.docsend.com/view/gxc4bknxzs5f6hsw
Notes: Dmitry ran his own STEM program for a couple of years and realized that when it came to curriculum, back office, parent and student communications, there was a lot to automate. He did it for himself and then started Brite to sell it to others.
Skills Union
Description: Singapore UX/Coding bootcamp
Website: www.skillsunion.com
Founder: Colin Mansell
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinmansell/
Email: colin@skillsunion.com
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: Vocational schools globally have only accelerated in the last year. Personally, I’m waiting to see if we can build a product that companies want to buy at scale (see Lambda Pods above). Once the fit to employer behavior is accomplished, folks like Colin are going to do very well!
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.