🌨 Brighteye Ventures – February: Introducing the EdTech Garage
👋🏽 Happy February,
We hope 2022 has started well, safe and busy for you all! Our attention in January was very much focused 🔍 on our annual European Edtech Funding Report – we hope you enjoyed it!
Meanwhile, we follow with interest the discussion in the US 🇺🇸 around how venture firms foresee a tougher funding environment ahead, with tech startup valuations cut and a reset in investment behaviour, like here in the Wall Street Journal.
Will we see the same trend in 🇪🇺 Europe? It’s too early to tell. Certainly, we expect investors to be a bit more disciplined in 2022, however, given the amount raised by venture funds in the last few years, the pace of investment is unlikely to slow down. Edtech funding activity has started strong here in 2022 – with GoStudent following up the record 2021 by announcing a €300M round in mid-January💥. Just after that, they shared news of the acquisition of two other European edtechs – Seneca (UK) and Tus Media Group (Spain). This continues a consolidation trend that we saw in 2021 with larger edtech companies acquiring smaller European players to strengthen their local footprint.
📰 Welcome to a round-up of our own news, too, including:
A new investment – welcoming Skiller Whale to the portfolio
Selected news from the portfolio - Create Academy award and Aula acquisition
Ecosystem partnership – introducing the EdTech Garage
Brighteye Insights & events – the European Edtech Funding Report launch
Curated Content – a few suggestions worth lending an ear or eye to
🙏🏻Thanks for your support and enjoy the updates!
Best,
The Brighteye Ventures Team
💰 NEW INVESTMENT
🆕 Skiller Whale (UK) - $2.9M round
We are proud to welcome Skiller Whale to our portfolio and very happy to lead the $2.9M round, alongside Playfair Capital and RLC Ventures. It's a joy 🔆 to work with you on the journey to grow your professional tech training offer Hywel Carver, Dave Millican, Hayley M. and team 👏! Covered by UK Tech Investment News and Tech Funding News.
For those looking to upskill your software developer teams, Skiller Whale is a unique solution that pays dividends both in terms of productivity and retention.
📣 SELECTED NEWS FROM THE PORTFOLIO
🏆 Create Academy grabs Good Web Guide Award
Congratulations to Create Academy on winning the Education Category in the GWG Awards🎈! Other category winners include The Modern House, Edward Bulmer, Collagerie and Inigo, so an impressive group to be part of! It’s great to follow how you continue to build your creative confidence and make learning a joy into 2022.
🏫 Acquisition of Aula and introducing Plot
Aula recently announced that their Aula Education Ltd’s Learning Experience Platform technology has been acquired by Coventry University Group. The university group will keep the Aula name and continue to develop the platform with key members from Aula Education.
A core team has spun out to deliver a learning experience design product and will rebrand as Plot.
🌎 Ironhack campus expansion
Tech skills bootcamp Ironhack are expanding their offer rapidly, and have recently opened new locations in Düsseldorf, London and Tampa – where students can learn online and join the community in real life at the Ironhack hubs for events, workshops and gatherings. It takes the company’s total physical location count to 12 – and you can of course learn remotely from anywhere in the world, in English, Spanish, German and Portuguese.
We also recommend checking out The Knowledge Review’s 🗞 interview with Co-Founder and CEO Gonzalo Manrique, highlighting Ironhack’s role in ensuring that education keeps up with the digital transformation taking place globally.
🧩 ECOSYSTEM PARTNERSHIP
🖇 Introducing the EdTech Garage
We have been partnering on developing a brand-new network for early-stage European Edtech founders and startups and last week we were happy to launch the EdTech Garage. The concept has been created by Frank Albert Coates and Brighteye, and the Garage is an associate of the European Edtech Alliance. We identified a gap in the support offered to early-stage founders and decided to create the EdTech Garage - where founders can scale up faster 🚀 through the founder community, matchmaking and specialised resources 🛠.
🔎 BRIGHTEYE INSIGHTS & EVENTS
Published with a bit of ado last month, we think the annual Brighteye European Edtech Funding Report is worth a quick reminder.
We launched on 27 January with an excellent panel of experts. If you missed it, you can catch the recording of the conversation between Edtech founders Marie Taquet of iconoClass and Felix Ohswald of GoStudent, Tom Singlehurst from Citi Bank, Carla Napoleao from Dealroom and Partner Alex Spiro Latsis from Brighteye - moderated by Freya Pratty from Sifted here:
💁 CURATED CONTENT
A little collection of content that we have contributed to and come across in our VC, edtech and startup circles.
🗃️ Newsletter
We are very pleased with our Brighteye x Dealroom Edtech collaboration, and would totally recommend the monthly newsletter Dealroom is publishing – full of insights, news, deals and job opportunities in the edtech space. Read it and subscribe here!
🎙 Podcast
Edtech Insiders: The This Week in Edtech with Ben Kornell episode published on 5 February features a chat with our Head of Research Rhys Spence – a good place to start listening in to this podcast.
As part of introducing the EdTech Garage (above), an EdTech Founders Podcast has been launched alongside – featuring startup experiences from members of the network. First out was Jens Aarre Seip, CEO and Co-Founder of Norwegian startup Curipod. There are soon more to come, and it’s free to listen and read the transcripts – also for non-Garage members!
In the EdTech Crowd, Edtech entrepreneur and president of EdTech Poland Foundation meets with industry innovators, founders, and influencers. Guests from all over the world share their stories, vision on education, predictions and tips for Edtech fellows. A podcast created for those who would like to look at the industry from different angles.
📑 News/Articles/Reports
We wrote some comments around the European Edtech Funding Report for Tech Crunch, titled European, North American edtech startups see funding triple in 2021.