Edtech Insiders

Sergio Monsalve is a Founding Partner of Roble Ventures, a venture capital investing firm based in Silicon Valley that invests in human enablement technologies: solutions that help human progress.

Sergio is also visiting professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and Business. In both roles, he is focused on the “Future of Work and Learning” and on developing technology innovations and entrepreneurship.

Sergio has been on the board and/or an investor of various companies in this area of focus, including Udemy ($3B), Adaptive Insights (Sold to Workday for $1.6B), Ubits, Slang, and Kahoot! Before he started his investing career, he was an entrepreneur and also held various roles in high-growth technology companies like eBay.

Sergio holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor of science degree in management sciences and engineering from Stanford University. Sergio is originally from Mexico and is very active helping aspiring Latinx entrepreneurs and VC’s.

Recommended Resources

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool

Topics This Week:

1. NSVF and Others Receive Funding from MacKenzie Scott for General Operating
   • Here’s Who MacKenzie Scott Donated To So Far In February
   • MacKenzie Scott Makes Historic Gift to NewSchools Venture Fund
2. Edtech Metrics and Skepticism
   • Edtech Companies Must Place Learning Ahead of Revenue and Engagement
   • Who is the Theranos of Education?
   • Edtech firm Zovio (ZVO) fined $22 million for false advertising, misleading students
3. Amazon expands Career Choice
   • Amazon’s Employees Can Go to College, Free. What’s in It for Higher Ed?
   • Amazon Partners With 140 Colleges And Universities To Expand Free Tuition Program
4. Funding, M&A
   • Byju’s founder backs startup in $800 million funding at $22 billion valuation
   • Medway raises $15 million Series A from Softbank and seven other funds 
   • Edtech startup FourthRev raises $11.2 million Series A to bridge the digital skills gap
   • From coding school to career acceleration platform, Italy’s Epicode strives for expansion with €10 million
   • Chipper Raises $5.6M to Eliminate Student Loan Debt and Combat the Latinx Funding Gap
   • Course Hero scoops up Scribbr for subject-specific study help
   • Classplus set to score $80 Mn in Series D round
   • Cialfo extends series B to $60m, Tiger Global leads $20 mn fund raise in edtech firm Cialfo

Guest: Ryan Stewart - Secretary of Education @ New Mexico Public Education Department

1. International Women’s Day (“Break the Bias”)

• Top 200 Women who are leading Global EdTech Startups. – HolonIQ
• Supercharger Edtech Female Founders
• Erase All Kittens signs distribution deal with Tesco

2. Russia becomes a true pariah state for education

• Colleges cut financial ties to Russia
• European University Association Kicks Out Russian Universities
• Hundreds of Medical Students Trapped in Ukraine

3. Continued Rise of Work-Integrated Training

• Work Shift Explainer: A new language for CS degrees - Work Shift
• Employers Are Changing How They View Training. 
• Is Competency-Based Education an Idea Whose Time Has Come?

4. Funding and Policy

• Education Department clarifies rules on income-share agreements
• Public Service Loan Forgiveness Tops 100,000 Borrowers
• High-poverty schools get only small boost in budget deal

5. India India India 

• India top nation to get edtech patents
• Edtech Eruditus gets $350 million 
• Edtech startups bridging the education gap in non-metro cities

6. M & A

• Reforge Raises $60M
• Clearlake to buy edtech firm Discovery Education
• Daybreak earns (Series) A+ 

 Josh Owens is the CEO and co-founder of Boost, a personal notification assistant for students on their smartphone. 

Josh was formerly the CEO of Supplykick, a growth-stage online marketplace retailer, has been a gubernatorial candidate for the State of Indiana, and has taught economics at Butler University and Indiana University.

Boost connects directly to a student's Canvas account, and is designed to be easy & effective to use with no new work for administrators, instructors, or students; students who use Boost are 3% more likely to pass their class, they earn 4% higher grades, and they are 6% more likely to turn in any given assignment.

Recommended Resources

• Boost Efficacy Research Reports
• Why Aren't Text Message Interventions Designed to Boost College Success? by Benjamin Castleman, UVA
• Nudge by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler

Eduflow is rapidly becoming one a best-in-class LMS, including a cutting edge peer grading system that both saves instructor time and provides learning opportunities for learners and graders alike.

David Kofoed Wind, the CEO of Peergrade and Eduflow describes his unusual journey from university teaching to edtech in Copenhagen, Denmark, and how Eduflow is working to make online, asynchronous collaborative learning into a new paradigm for education.

We also talk about Artificial Intelligence, and David is one of the rare people who both deeply understands AI and does not necessarily believe that it solves all core education problems; he states how a fully AI-based grading system would simply deprives learners from the educational experience of grading others' work.  

David's Recommended Resource

25 Years of Edtech by Martin Weller

Topics this week include:

1. The Impact on Education of the War in Ukraine 
   • 7.5 million children & youth with education disrupted
   • Students rally to support Ukraine
   • EdTech Startups in Ukraine
   • Top 10 Ukrainian EdTech Startups to Look Out for Amid War
   • MIT Ends Program in Russia
   • Ukraine invasion underscores value of higher ed
2. Funding Rounds
   1. Disco, Toronto-Based CBC platform, gets $15mm series A from GSV and others
   2. EdTech startup Tutored by Teachers raises over $10m 
   3. Edtech Luca Raises a $3 Million Pre-seed Round and Starts Operations in Mexico
   4. Singapore edtech Genius Group files for $40M US IPO
   5. EdTech startup Vygo raises £1.5m to accelerate global borderless education support
   6. Founders of Zerodha, Cred, others invest $1.7m in edtech platform Kalvi
3. Google Dedicates $100mm Career Fund toward New Forms of Education and Certification
   1. Google Creates $100 Million Fund for Skills Training Program
   2. Interview with Leila Makarechi - Chief Business Officer @ Merit America, the non-profit that is one of the first recipients of Google's investment
4. Interview with Guest:
   1. Justin Weinberg - Co-founder & CEO @ Aktiv Learning
      • Aktiv Learning has recently renamed itself (from 101edu), released a new mobile first math curriculum and continues to build world class platforms dedicated to active learning. 

What can Listeners Do:

1. DONATE TODAY! to  Education Cannot Wait
2. Hire Upwork developers from Ukraine 
3. Donate, partner or volunteer to do mock interviews with Merit America

Our guest this week is Jomayra Herrera - Partner @ Reach Capital, talking about Web3.

1. Higher Ed Beat
   • A pathway out of intergenerational poverty - Paul Quinn College offers admission to students and family members
   • U.S. House expands Pell Grants but excludes online ed
2. Mobile Education
   • State of the mobile education market 2021
3. Byju's Becoming an Edtech Flagship
   • Byju’s acquires Austrian math app GeoGebra in €100M Deal
   • Byju’s broadens play from edtech with brick-and-mortar tuition centers
   • Can the EdTech Boom last? (Economist)
4. Robograders
   • PROOF POINTS: a smarter robo-grader
5. M&A Roundup
   • Veritas Capital to acquire Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
   • Mediahuis Ventures leads €3.4m investment round in edtech company Tomorrow's Education
   • Workwhile raises $13m series A led by Reach Capital

Post-recording Update: 

• How the tech industry is responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine | TechCrunch
• A podpourri of learning options: pods, hubs, and microschools in the wake of the Pandemic
• Will edtech investments reach $10b in 2022?
• EdTech startup Tutored by Teachers raises over $10M 

Jomayra Herrera is a partner at Reach Capital, one of the leading edtech venture capital firms, where she supports entrepreneurs that develop technology solutions for challenges in education from early childhood through future of work. 

In this conversation, we talk about education investing and life as an Edtech VC, as well as about Web3 and education and how it could increase equity and diversity in the crypto space.

Resources

• Learning Earning and Web3: Why I'm Jumping In by Jomayra Herrera 
• The Raging 2020s by Alec Ross

Topics This Week:

1. Education Stocks Take a Hit
   • 306 global education stocks lost $120B of value in 2021, down 40%
   • Edtech Stocks hit a steep learning curve
2. Potato Head Becomes a Digital Therapist
   • PresenceLearning partnered with Hasbro to bring beloved characters & classic games to therapy platform
3. Funding + M&A Round-up
   • Munic-based Edurino raised €3.35M to advance digital learning for kids
   • Former Twitter India head Manish Maaheshwari’s Invact Metaversity raises funds @ $33M valuation
   • Why these Udemy execs left to build a better Udemy
   • Paper secures $343M CAD with US schools drawn to its remote tutoring tech
4. Evidence as a Service
   • GUEST: Karl Rectanus - Co-founder & CEO @ LearnPlatform
   • LearnPlatform releases subscription to help solutions providers lower costs, build EdTech evidence that districts & states trust
5. Homeschooling
   • GUEST: Kelly Smith - Founder & CEO @ Prenda

Post-Recording Updates:

• Edtech is luring students to cheat with fake answer sites
• Edtech company Cengage names publishing vet as CTO
• Edtech market to reach S288B USD by 2031 (comprehensive research by FMI)
• Educators have some pointed advice for tech companies building the metaverse

Joshua Wöhle is the CEO of UK-based Edtech company Mindstone,  a platform that helps people learn faster, remember more and get things done. 

Previously, Joshua was Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at SuperAwesome, the biggest kids technology company in the world, which was acquired by Epic Games in the summer of 2020. Joshua is an EdTech enthusiast, advisor and Investor.

Mindstone is a platform that allows users to automatically create the best learning pathways from content available online (articles, podcasts, videos, you name it) to help learners reach your learning goals, while at the same time inserting elements of discovery to bring the joy back into learning.

Unusually among Edtech companies, Mindstone has received both VC funding and crowdfunding, which we discuss in this episode.