🗞 Brighteye Quarterly Update - Q3 2019
Hi there folks,
We have been pretty active over the last few months so we are excited to our share the Brighteye’s Q3 update with you!
💥 NEW INVESTMENTS
We are thrilled to announce three new investments since June:
Zen Educate 🇬🇧 - Leading supply teacher platform in the UK. They match on-demand teachers and teaching assistants with schools in London and Manchester. Read more.
Gosu.ai 🇱🇹 - Just in time coaching for esports. They help gamers (i.e. Dota2, PUGB, soon more games) improve their skills through detailed analyses and personalised recommendations.
Soon to be announced
⚗ SELECTED PORTFOLIO UPDATES
Aula Brain: Amazing knowledge base of how things are done at Aula - Congratulations to the team for putting that together!
Ornikar selected by LinkedIn as a Top French Startup 2019 💪
Litigate has been named a finalist for AI Supplier of the Year and their innovative tripartite partnership with Baker McKenzie, Mishcon de Reya LLP, and Taylor Wessing being nominated in the Alliance of the Year category
Surrogate is live (+ great piece or article on Hackaday)! You can now play with two games: Race Real Cars & Real Batman ‘66 Pinball.
📣 CURRENT OPEN ROLES @ PORTFOLIO COMPANIES
Our portfolio companies are recruiting! View opportunities by clicking on links below.
🇪🇺
Aula: Head of U.S. Marketing, Engagement Partner, etc.
Ornikar: Head of Content, Jr Marketing Manager (B2B), etc.
Ironhack: General Manager France, VP of Education, etc.
Tech Will Save Us: Customer Support Agent (Supply Chain), etc.
Zen Educate: Product Manager, Full Stack software engineer, etc.
🇺🇸
Epic!: Director of Product Design, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, etc.
TeachFX: Head of Engagement, Software Engineer, etc.
👯♀ PROFESSIONAL B2B COACHING & MENTORING SOLUTIONS MARKET MAP
While talking to numerous companies in the coaching/mentoring space, we crafted a market map (80+ companies) to help us refine our thinking about how the sector is shaping up and to differentiate between the various approaches.
👓 MARKET INTELLIGENCE
What we’ve been reading/watching/listening to/thinking about:
🎙 Podcasts
The Happiness Lab by Yale professor Dr Laurie Santos
Dans la tête d’un VC by Jean-Charles Kurdali (note: podcast in 🇫🇷)
📚 Books
A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College by Ryan Craig
Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up by Jerry Colonna
📑 Reports/Articles
TL:DR - Facts in context
We’re interested in managed marketplaces’ ability to make learning more accessible, both by empowering teachers to connect directly with students (eg. Ornikar) and by helping institutions more easily recruit and place talented teachers (eg. Zen Educate). Li Jin, partner at Andreesen Horowitz, has written two excellent pieces analysing the evolution of marketplaces towards more managed models (ie marketplaces that help verify the qualification of suppliers and coordinate delivery of services) and what they could mean for the future of work more broadly. She predicts that the advent of managed marketplaces will allow people to more effectively sell their expertise around subjects they are passionate about.
The evolution of higher education is something we continuously keep an eye on. Research by Pearson shows that almost half of university graduates in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Europe don't think that higher education prepared them for their career and many would choose a different path if they had to do it again. Meanwhile student loan debt in the US is at an all time high ($1.5 Trillion), 40% of students who enroll at university don’t finish and 20-30% of universities in the US are growing expenses faster than revenues, in part because they can’t retain students. While elite universities have much better outcomes and retention, they have become harder to access, particularly for those who come from poor families, in the US, but also in France, the UK and elsewhere in Europe. The cost of higher education is what makes newer, shorter, cheaper educational models that are targeted at 21st century skills increasingly attractive and Ryan Craig’s A New U has an exhaustive breakdown of these new models.
EdTech news QUIZ
1. How much dollars were invested in the first half of 2019 in US EdTech space?
a) $500M b) $750M c) $1Bn d) $1.3Bn
2. Fill in the blank: €___M have been invested in EdTech startups in Europe between January and September 2019.
3. Name the company: Which EU EdTech startup has recently raised $30M to expand into the US?
Answers: 1) $1Bn according to EdSurge 2) €310M according to Pitchbook 3) Brainly
💡 EDTECH MARKETING
As you may know, we launched a series of EdTech marketing guides to recognise EdTech CMOs' great work and to inspire other CMOs.
#1 From B2T to B2B marketing - Sean D'Arcy, CMO @Kahoot!
#2 Data driven branding - Antonin Delfino, CMO @Ornikar
#3 Scaling your marketing internationally - Eva Peris, VP of Sales/Marketing @Ironhack
#4 Hacking the student recruitment process - Matthieu Pouget Abadie, VP Students @OpenClassrooms
🔜 Guides soon to be released 😬: Blinkist and Brainly
*** Join our growing and closed EdTech Marketing community (60+ CMOs) ***
Note: Access is currently restricted to full time CMOs only. Thanks for your understanding.
📍 UPCOMING EVENTS
November (pretty busy month!)
The Marketplace Conference (Berlin)
Slush (Helsinki)
TechCrunch Disrupt (Berlin)
Brighteye workshop in Paris: B2B Sales Process with the CEOs of Beekast, Growth Tribe & Supermood
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