Dunce Deals #5 - 01 Edu, Section4, and Highway Education
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 Contra. Before Dunce, I founded three companies, NetGravity (IPO), Rocketship Public Schools (12k students) and Zeal (sold 2018).
Thoughts
While ThanksGiving is kind of the third holiday for me after Halloween (yay!) and Christmas (festive), I definitely enjoy the leftovers.
This week begins my series on finding product-market fit (PMF). This is what I work on with founders every week, so it has lived in a Google Doc for several years. In the name of transparency, here is the beginning of how I think about PMF.
Deals
A week with three schools, yeah! I have to admit that if I could just think about schools all day, I would probably be even happier than I already am.
01 Edu
Description: A new coding school from a coding school vet.
Website: 01-edu.org
Founder: david sultan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsultan/
Email: david@zone-01.com
Stage: Seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: Nicolas Sadirac built a coding school called Ecole 42 which pioneered the idea of peer assisted learning. 01 Edu takes that idea to scale.
Section4
Description: Section4 is an unaccredited business school featuring cohort based courses from Professor G (Scott Galloway)
Website: section4.com
Founder: greg shove
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregshove/
Email: greg@section4.com
Stage: Series A
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: I’m really excited about cohort-based courses, and Section4 is one of the leaders, with Professor G’s courses. They are teaching a ton of students now at $750 per class.
Highway Education
Description: Lambda for Marketers
Website: https://www.highwayed.com
Founder: toby murdock
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobymurdock/
Email: toby@highwayed.com
Stage: Pre-Seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: I have to admit that I always try not to talk to people about marketing. It’s probably because I really like product, and begrudgingly admit that sales is important, but wish that was it. However, Toby makes a great case for why the world (especially large enterprises which he knows well from his previous startup Kapost) is going to need many many of them.
If you are a founder with a great idea, send me your deck at john@danners.org. I can’t promise it will make it to Dunce Deals, but I ready every one. If you are early in your company, also think about Transcend or OnDeck two great places to meet your co-founders and work on your idea. I work with a bunch of founders who went through those programs.