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