Dunce Deals #6 - Howdy, Tutorfly, and Immersity
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
Welcome to the end of 2020, and just in case you thought it was going to go down without a fight, here we go again!
My approach to covid for the last few months has been to have safe socially distanced gatherings on my patio, but I shut that all down. So here we are again, sheltering in place. These vaccines can not come soon enough!
Luckily, that gives me lots of times to talk to founders and process what’s going on. This week is the second installment of Finding Product Market Fit. I hope you enjoy!
News
Great shout out for GetSetup from the governor of Michigan about how they help seniors learn all of the things they need to make it through the pandemic.
Deals
A couple of companies here I’ve been tracking for a few months that are doing very well. Check them out.
Howdy
Description: Live peer-led discussion groups for professional skills development.
Website: joinhowdy.com
Founder: darius vaillancourt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/p-darius-vaillancourt-99481928/
Email: darius@joinhowdy.com
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: Howdy has really started to gain momentum with several large Coursera providers to augment their classes with peer discussion groups.
Tutorfly
Description: Peer tutoring platform for k12
Website: tutorfly.org
Founder: Parsa Rezvani
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parsa-rezvani-85319aa6
Email: parsa@tutorfly.org
Stage: Seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: Tutorfly is now doing $1M GMV on their peer tutoring platform.
Immersity
Description: experiential learning for business schools
Website: immersityed.com
Founder: Dale Jarosz
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-jarosz-51281738
Email: jaroszdd@umich.edu
Stage: Pre-seed
Raising: Yes
Current Dunce Investment: No
Notes: Immersity has a lead term sheet for their round, so closing in next few weeks. Lots of college interest and starting to get interest from MOOCs for more experiential learning as part of courses.
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.