☀️June Update - European EdTech VC funding 2021 passes $1Bn!
👋🏽 Dear EdTech Friends,
We hope you are all healthy and happy – and looking forward to some well-deserved time off over the summer!🏖
Another busy newsletter from us, where we are excited to share:
An Investment Announcement
Selected Portfolio Updates
Brighteye Insights – a brand new half-year European Edtech Funding report, and please help with our internationalisation survey
Events – Introducing a new Brighteye programme to support the European EdTech community: feedback sessions for founders and more European Edtech Tour
Curated Content – some recommendations for the summer
Thanks for subscribing and enjoy our update! Please follow us on Brighteye 👋 LinkedIn and 🐦 Twitter to be the first to know all the news.
💰INVESTMENT ANNOUNCEMENT
🆕 iconoClass - €3M Seed
Earlier this month we were happy to share the news that we are backing French business development school iconoClass in their €3m Seed round - alongside Mustard Seed MAZE and impressive BAs. 🚀€3m to change the way to train people in Business Development. Read more on EU-Startups – and watch an interview with Founder and CEO Marie Taquet (in French) here 🇫🇷!
… And we have a few new investments that will be announced soon!
📣 SELECTED PORTFOLIO UPDATES
👐 Hack The Box - Capture the Flag
Hack The Box recently hosted a global Capture The Flag event, a real-time hacking competition that gathered 9,900 hackers/players from all over the world🌏. It's the first time for this hacking competition - that will become an annual event - and the participation was extraordinary. Definitely a good indicator of the industry's "thirst" for education and training in the cybersecurity space. Here’s a little recap!
🗞 Teach FX - What we've lost and what we've learned
The Washington Post recently published an article by TeachFX partner Michael Matsuda, Superintendent at Anaheim Union High School District, and their very own Head of Engagement Debra Russell, challenging conventional views of learning loss and highlighting students’ incredible capacity for resilience. 🔍Well worth checking out!
🔎 BRIGHTEYE INSIGHTS
📆 Half Year Funding Review
Today we launched the “EdTech Funding Report 2021- Half year review’”.
Top lines include:
European EdTech has received over $1B in VC investment in a calendar year for the first time, with 6 months of 2021 to run
European EdTech VC has increased 15X since 2014, set to increase further before 2021 close
Average deal size (across all rounds) is $9.4M, more than triple the 2020 average of $3M
France has received the most funding ($223M across 8 deals), but the UK has seen the most activity ($209M across 40 deals).
23 European EdTech companies have raised >$10M in 2021
🌏 Internationalisation Survey - please help?
Want more of this type of insight? To be able to share the best content and analysis we do sometimes need a little help!
Right now we are doing a benchmark study on internationalisation in edtech, and would love to get your insights (⏱️ 10 min | 🙋 14 questions | 🎭 anonymous )! As always, we will share the results with the EdTech community (and beyond). We tried to make it easy for you: lots of multiple choice and limited text required!
▶️ The survey closes on Sunday 27 June - you know what to do!
👓 In Perspective – new talks with OECD and McKinsey added
More than 300 people have watched our interviews with Citi’s Tom Singlehurst, Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin at the OECD, and the latest featuring Emma Dorn from McKinsey & Company. We hope you would like to check them out, too!
🌍 EVENTS
💁♂️ Brighteye Feedback Programme (“Office Hours”)
If you are looking for feedback/advice on key topics related to fundraising, marketing, term sheets, recruitment, board management, etc. - We’ve got you covered!
We are introducing our very own “Office Hours”, where early stage EdTech founders can join us to talk about their startup and get totally honest feedback live in a short session.
How does it work? Founders can apply here, and we will help a handful of founders every month that gets 15 minutes each to discuss their queries with someone from our investment team - Alex, Ben, David or Sarah. Simple as that!
🇬🇧 European Edtech Tour: UK - Scaling Marketplaces for Learning, 24 June
Although we are starting to get excited by potentially being able to start traveling for real again soon, we have enjoyed a bit of virtual travelling for our European Edtech Tour, visiting the Nordics, Spain & Portugal, Germany, France and Greece. We have met with an impressive crowd of edtech founders and VCs, including many of you.
And even better, we have another one coming up – the UK is on this week, on Thursday 24 June at 4-5pm (BST), where we are discussing digital marketplaces for education. On stage we are happy to introduce Zen Education CEO Slava Kremerman, Zarja Cibej, CEO at MyTamarin, and Bertie Hubbard Co-Founder and CEO at MyTutor – all sharing rich experience and knowledge from their journeys.
For a look at the VC and general EdTech development landscape, it is a pleasure to be joined by Ibis Capital Partner and CEO/Co-Founder of edtechX Benjamin Vedrenne-Cloquet and Hussein Kanji, Partner at Hoxton Ventures.
There are more spaces, please register here!
💁 CURATED CONTENT
The Summer is here 🌞, and we hope you all get the chance to wind down and recharge for 2021 Part 2. When, 🤞🏼fingers crossed, we can slowly start to see each other again IRL. Meanwhile, most of the summer is ahead of us and it may be a good time to read and listen up on some great brain food. We have put together a little list of stuff we’ve come across that we like!
🎙 Podcasts
The Dutch Edtech Podcast – hosted by Peter Van Sabben, CEO at Growth Tribe and Co-Founder and board member at the recently launched Dutch Edtech. Weekly interviews with Dutch and European EdTech pioneers.
📑 News/Articles/Reports
Our Principal David Guérin is excited about The true power of learning communities, and has shared some of his excitement in a great piece!
In Online Ed, Content Is No Longer King—Cohorts Are - Wes Kao
As part of a Creative Roundtable that we were invited to by Startup Norway, they featured our Associate Sarah Bertram Smith in this great piece – The Future of Creative industries.
🗃️ Newsletters
With the launch of the European Edtech Alliance earlier in June we also got the brilliant news that they will share a monthly European Edtech News update, the first due out very soon – read more and subscribe here!