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Dunce Deals #35 - 15 new deals; Funding Factor; Leaving for the metaverse

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Dunce Deals #35 - 15 new deals; Funding Factor; Leaving for the metaverse

John Danner
Nov 20, 2021
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Dunce Deals #35 - 15 new deals; Funding Factor; Leaving for the metaverse

dunce.substack.com

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 Outschool, GetSetup, and Maven.  Before Dunce, I founded three companies, NetGravity (IPO), Rocketship Public Schools (12k students) and Zeal (sold 2018).

Thoughts

It’s been an amazing first four years as an investor. I had one thesis, that the Internet would go live and that education would be the biggest beneficiary. I funded dozens of companies, Covid hit, and everything accelerated by five years. I feel incredibly fortunate.

Now I think we are at the end of that cycle. I see far fewer completely novel ideas now, and while I will continue to fund in the traditional Internet space, I’m increasingly spending my time trying to understand what’s coming next. My three jumping off points are web3, meta, and AI, but I’m sure they will lead me towards a much more concrete thesis over the next twelve months.

I’m also going to change the fund name to Danner Capital since: (1) it’s just my money and one friend, (2) I thought the name was funnier than anyone else, and (3) it’s just simpler to run an eponymous fund. You will see those changes over the next twelve months as well.

I plan to update you all here periodically, but may be a little less frequently as I go back to Stanford for a year in January and am working on my new thesis as well.

News

Congrats to Abwaab on their $20M Series A. And congrats to all of you who participated through our syndicate!

Congrats to Sora on their $18M Series A!

Shout out to Edgi Learning (not a Dunce company) who are starting down the web3 path with tokens and quests for their students. I’m excited to see how this goes.

Deals

I have a bunch of deals to get in front of you this week to clean out my backlog.

Factor

Description: Figuring out how to ease the pain of high school.

Founder: caleb hicks

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

Email: calebhicks@gmail.com

Stage: Idea

Raising: No

Current Dunce Investment: Yes

Notes: Caleb was the former CAO at Lambda and is just stellar. I would fund him to re-invent peanut butter if that’s what he wanted to do. Instead he’s working on a program that will avoid high school pain.

Livus

Description: Maven for Brazil

Website: https://www.livus.com.br

Founder: alexandre alvares

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

Email: alexandre@livus.com.br

Stage: Pre-Seed

Raising: No

Current Dunce Investment: Real soon now

Notes: Alexandre and his co-founders were on the founding team of Neon bank. Brazil is the second biggest creator market (maybe the first) after the U.S. Enough said.

Mindjoy

Description: Coding classes in South Africa.

Website: mindjoy.com

Founder: Gabi Immelman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabi-immelman-15a1165b/

Email: gabi@mindjoy.com

Stage: Idea

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: Real soon

Notes: Gabi is building a school on top of repl.it. It’s a fresh channel and my first South Africa investment. Gabi is a joy.

Workweek

Description: A creator-first media company

Website: workweek.com

Founder: Adam Ryan

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

Email: adam@workweek.com

Stage: Seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: This is a bit of an oddball for Dunce Deals, but creator economy loosely fits into the future of work, so I pay attention. What’s interesting about workweek is how thin a shell you could build around a bunch of prominent creators and be a successful media company. Feels like a DAO in the making.

YaizY

Description: Live classes for kids in multimedia arts and technology.

Website: https://yaizy.io/us

Founder: Vitaly Gordon

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

Email: vg@yaizy.io

Stage: Pre-seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: Vitaly and his co-founder are spending a lot of time in schools in Russia, trying to figure out if there is an Outschool model that will work there.

VoizDAO

Description: A DAO focused on climate change activism.

Website: voizdao.xyz

Founder: Diego Espinosa

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

Email: dieg@voizreviews.com

Stage: Seed

Raising: No

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: Diego is interesting from a few perspectives. First, he is a former trader and fully embraces the web3 red pill of “the value of something is what others think it’s worth”. Second, he’s building this distributed autonomous organization (DAO) that smells just like a non-profit, but uses the web3 mechanics of tokens and NFTs to potentially create a lot of value for investors. I’m too early in my research to know if it will work, but Diego is one of the clearest thinkers I have met on what’s coming.

PathMatch

Description: A better Handshake

Website: pathmatch.com

Founder: Nancy Soni

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

Email: nancy@pathmatch.com

Stage: Seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: Nancy is a former recruiter and on a mission to help high school and college students present themselves better. She helps them build profiles with short video interviews and a bunch of other things to remove friction from the process.

Commaful

Description: Medium for Fiction

Website: https://commaful.com/

Founder: Sydney Liu

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

Email: sydney.liu.sl@gmail.com

Stage: Seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: I’m a big fan of writing and the web has done a not-great job of supporting and distributing great works of independent fiction. Sydney is trying to change that.

School of Motion

Description: CBC for digital design

Website: https://www.schoolofmotion.com

Founder: joey korenman

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

Email: joey@schoolofmotion.com

Stage: Series A+

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: Joey designed the first CBC, or at least a very early one, and is now doing several million dollars a year in motion design. Now, he’s branching out into other areas.

StoryChopsticks

Description: Live online CBC for kids to learn chinese.

Website: https://storychopsticks.com/

Founder: Yuanxin Sun

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%E5%AD%99%E8%8B%91%E9%A6%A8yuanxin/

Email: yuanxin.sun@storychopsticks.com

Stage: Seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: It’s great to see CBC’s move to kids learning Chinese!

GRID

Description: No-code education games creation tool

Website: https://breshna.io/

Founder: mariam nusrat

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

Email: mariam.adil@gamingfordev.com

Stage: Pre-Seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: Mariam is from the World Bank and co-founders from the gaming world and has built a no-code game creator for education apps.

Kderno

Description: No-code tools to build your live online education business.

Website: https://about.kderno.com/

Founder: rafael pinheiro costa

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

Email: rafael@clippingcacd.com.br

Stage: Pre-seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: This is a bit more practical than something like Phenomena. They help educators get their business up and running with no code. This space is really great.

NoCodeHackers

Description: a CBC and tools to teach product marketing people how to build rich web pages with no code

Website: https://www.nocodehackers.es/

Founder: Alex Bernardo

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandro-bernardo-diaz/

Email: alex.b@minimum.run

Stage: Pre-seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: I like this approach. There are a huge number of no-code tools in the enterprise like Zapier, but no one taking a specific profession and teaching them how to put them all together. These guys have built components in webflow and a CBC focused on product marketing people to help them avoid needing devs. From there, they have about fifty other roles to help.

Immigo

Description: Peer-based English learning

Website: https://www.immigo.io

Founder: Chelsea Jeon

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelsea-jeon/

Email: chelsea@immigo.io

Stage: Pre-seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: Chelsea is taking a creator-led approach to English learning, tapping the hundreds of creators with large audiences teaching English on YouTube and other platforms.

Queen’s English

Description: Group english classes for kids in tier 2/3 cities in India.

Website: www.queensenglish.co

Founder: Sandeep Mallareddy

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

Email: sandeep@queensenglish.co

Stage: Seed

Raising: Yes

Current Dunce Investment: No

Notes: What I really like about Sandeep and his co-founder is that they have built a very simple group tutoring system at $1/session for students in smaller cities in India. They sell $100 packs for the first 100 lessons and have 70% renewal rate. Well done!

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.

Factor - High school boredom killer.

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 #35 - 15 new deals; Funding Factor; Leaving for the metaverse

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