Dunce Deals #32 - New - Skiller Whale, Spark Studio, and Pandai; Funded - Kurios.la; Syndicate - Finishing Abwaab

Hi, I'm John Danner.  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 three dozen pre-seed investments in the space including Lambda School, Outschool, GetSetup, and Maven.  Before Dunce, I founded three companies, NetGravity (IPO), Rocketship Public Schools (12k students) and Zeal (sold 2018).

Thoughts

News

Excited to be working with the team at Kurios who is building live courses for people upskilling in Product and Growth in LatAm. I hope to syndicate this with all of you when they get to their next milestone.

You’ve caught me a bit flat-footed this week, as I move from blogging to threading as my writing medium of choice. More new writing coming soon. In the meantime, I would love if you would give me feedback from your experience on this thread.

Syndicate

We are closing the Abwaab syndicate this week. Abwaab is my one MENA investment. I will just leave you with this chart.

Deals

Skiller Whale

Description: Hands-on tech coaching in 1-hour slots, live with an expert

Website: https://skillerwhale.com/

Founder: hywel carver

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

Email: hywel@skillerwhale.com

Stage: Pre-seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: Evaluating

Notes: I love love love this idea. As I wrote about in Tech Needs to Stop Whining About Talent, the main problem we have right now is that a huge number of people want to get into tech, but tech companies aren’t set up to develop people. In engineering, a lot of this comes down to the cost in time to senior engineers of coaching junior engineers on the team. That currently keeps companies from hiring too many junior engineers, because that cost is too high. Skiller Whale is going straight after that, by assigning members of a dev team coding coaches to help them develop without taking time from the senior engineers on the team.

Spark Studio

Description: Outschool for India

Website: https://sparkstudio.co/

Founder: anushree goenka

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

Email: anushree@sparkstudio.co

Stage: Seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: As an Outschool investor, I was kind of hoping they would expand internationally sooner. Kudos to the team though for wanting to nail their U.S. business before building globally. This has left the door open for companies to go after the opportunity. The Spark School folks have amazing pedigrees from Byju’s (the world’s largest edtech company), Swiggy, Teach for India. Enrichment in Asia feels likely to be bigger than the U.S. by an order of magnitude.

Pandai

Description: Malaysia's top study app

Website: https://pandai.org

Founder: Akmal Akhpah

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

Email: akmal@pandai.org

Stage: Seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: I’ve only started to dip my toe into SouthEast Asia, but it’s pretty hard not to love. Similar parent behavior as China or India (whatever my kid needs to learn, we will make it happen), and not nearly the competition as in those markets. Pandai is digital right now without live learning. If they get to live learning, I would be very excited.

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

CoLearn - K-9 virtual unschooling that’s better than free.

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.

Omella - payments for schools, non-profits, and small businesses.

Geniebook - a personalized learning platform for Singapore and Vietnam.

Hallo - cohort-based language learning.

StudyStream - Silent study groups online.

Ender - Minecraft competitions.

Stepful - A career training center for nurses.

Stoa - AltMBA for India.

Kurios - Reforge for LatAm.

This newsletter is not an offer to sell securities nor a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. I am not acting as your financial advisor and I urge you to consult your own advisors before making any investment decision.

I would love for you to follow me on twitter @jwdanner.