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Dunce Deals #34 - Questbook, buildspace, and allpod

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Dunce Deals #34 - Questbook, buildspace, and allpod

John Danner
Nov 6, 2021
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Dunce Deals #34 - Questbook, buildspace, and allpod

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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 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

Hope everyone had a great Halloween! I was happy that there were some kids this year. Fingers crossed that next year is huge!

I’ve continued my threading on twitter. Here’s a fun table of contents I built for my threads in case you don’t have the twitter habit yet.

Twitter avatar for @jwdanner
John Danner @jwdanner
Here are some topics you may love: Product Market Fit
Twitter avatar for @jwdanner
John Danner @jwdanner
Magic - https://t.co/jAHJHzGtge
5:43 PM ∙ Oct 27, 2021

News

Congrats to GetSetup for their partnership with Tivity bringing 18m more seniors to their community.

Congrats to Contra for going commission free and closing their Series B financing to accelerate the move to freelance as the main way of working.

I’m spending an increasing amount of time on DAOs because I think they are such a good fit for education. If you missed Li Jin’s piece on this, here it is.

Deals

Questbook

Description: Earn crypto while you learn web3 development.

Website: https://www.questbook.app/

Founder: Madhavan Malolan

Twitter: https://twitter.com/madhavanmalolan

Email: madhavan@creatoros.co

Stage: Seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: Here we go on web3. Madhavan had the insight that there are so few web3 devs, that companies would pay people to learn the web3 stack. He builds courses for each platform and gets paid in tokens from that platform. Students then earn tokens as they learn.

buildspace

Description: Earn crypto while you learn web3 development.

Website: https://buildspace.so

Founder: Farza Majeed

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farza-majeed-76685612a/

Email: farza@buildspace.so

Stage: Seed

Raising: No

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: You might see the striking similarity between buildspace and Questbook descriptions. These are also two YC founders. Farza pivoted from Zipschool to this. A little more on why I’m interested in this space. First of all, Gen Z loves crypto and there is a lot of energy here. Second, the blockchain has all of the basic properties of something that could re-organize the way things work like the Internet did - currency, automated contracts, ownership-based organizational structure. Specifically for education, the idea that students and teachers could own part of the institutions they are involved in is pretty intriguing. Here’s a fun tweet discussion around web3 for education.

Twitter avatar for @jwdanner
John Danner @jwdanner
Wow, there is 0 written about the ways web3 could reshape education. I need to write a thread on this. Please send me any thoughts and links about how you think education will work in a web3 world.
5:20 PM ∙ Sep 27, 2021
291Likes13Retweets

Allpod

Description: Tapping into ESA's to create new schools.

Website: https://allpod.com/

Founder: Ian Bravo

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-bravo-1538b215/

Email: ianwbravo@gmail.com

Stage: Pre-seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: Changing gears, there is another interesting thing going on called Education Savings Accounts. Basically, this is chopping up government education funding and letting parents spend them the way they want. There are about 1.5 million eligible students now (about 2.5% of all students in US) so still small, but these have a lot of momentum in red states. Ian wants to build schools funded by ESAs.

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 or read my medium posts medium.com/@johnwdanner

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Dunce Deals #34 - Questbook, buildspace, and allpod

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