🎄Our December 2022 Update
Dear friends,
❄️ We hope you are having a good December so far!
We have had an action-filled year at Brighteye, with 9 new investments announced 🎉. A number of reports, guides and hopefully other helpful content has been published, all accessible here to download and read 👀. We have hosted, co-hosted, contributed to and attended near 80 events, in real life and digitally, with the introduction of our week-long Edtech Startup Festival in September one of many highlights. We have also been active in the development and running of the EdTech Garage, a network by and for early-stage European edtech founders. And much more!
🔮 What to expect for the coming year? We are always excited about sharing the European Edtech Funding Landscape report at the beginning of the year, looking back at a 2022 that turned out quite different than it looked like at the end of 2021, and with a few predictions for 2023. We’ll take a little break for the festive season 🎈 now, but watch this space 🔍 for the launch of the 5th annual report on Wednesday 25 January.
Until then, please enjoy some updates from our portfolio and beyond, including:
New Investment – Simbel announces a €4M Seed round
Selected News from the Portfolio – GESAwards finalists
Insights – a new guide to understanding and securing government funding
Talent Needed – exciting opportunities with some of our family members
Curated content – some of our picks of good reads and listens
🙏🏻Thanks to every one of you for subscribing and supporting our work in 2022 – have a fab break and we can’t wait to see you next year!
Best,
The Brighteye Team
💰 NEW INVESTMENT
🆕 Simbel - €4M Seed
We are thrilled to have co-led Simbel’s €4M seed round alongside Speedinvest and strong Business Angels. Paris-based 🇫🇷 Simbel is an all-in-one solution helping HR teams to run learning and development operations seamlessly. It provides a central hub of curated content to make sure employees are empowered with the best training options.
❝We were immediately convinced by Loïc Jourdain and Charles Gras, who are methodical, determined and deeply knowledgeable founders. They have unique insights into the untapped L&D space for SMBs and have been able to build a product that delivers the fastest, cheapest and easiest way for employees to access curated and best-in-class training providers. Their vision resonated with us and we believe that Simbel can become the L&D standard for SMBs,❞ says our Principal David Guérin.
🗞 The announcement was well covered by publications like Tech.eu, Tech Funding News, Silicon Canals, EU-Startups, Global Edtech, Maddyness, French Web, RH Matin, FE News
Loïc Jourdain and Charles Gras of Simbel
All 2022 investments
Recapping our investment activities for the full year, we are extremely happy to have announced 🆕 investments in 9 members of the Brighteye family - Ribbon Education, Skiller Whale, Oneday, Visibly, Patika, sAInaptic, LabLabee, La Solive and Simbel.
Check out our website for the full portfolio!
📣 SELECTED NEWS FROM THE PORTFOLIO
🏆 Two GESAwards Regional Semi-finalists
Great to see that two of our portcos have competed in the regional semi-finals of the Global Edtech Startup Awards (GESA). iconoClass were in action in the French 🇫🇷 competition, and sAInaptic grabbed the top spot in the UK 🇬🇧 and will go on to compete in the global final in January. Best of luck, we are proud and excited!
🔎 INSIGHTS
New Guide - Accessing Government Funding
We recently published a guide on approaching government funding. Given the close relationship 🔗 between education and skills policy and the Edtech sector, we thought it could be helpful to set out some support on understanding how to access and secure government funding💰.
The guide contains:
🔹 10 commandments on pitching for government funding
🔹 An overview of types of government funding
🔹 An outlined typical bidding process
🔹 High-level overview of government procurement policy
🔹 Links to national tender sites
💪🏻 TALENT WANTED
It may be the end of the year, but the search for the best talent never ends for our portfolio companies. A few opportunities:
Simbel – Senior Product Designer
Tandem - Senior iOs Engineer
💁 CURATED CONTENT
✉️ Newsletter
We have recommended the Transcend newsletter in the past, but we think it’s fine to flag it again, in case you missed the #60 for the 2023 State of Edtech Fundraising. And because it generally is a good update!
🗞 Article
Hywel of our portco Skiller Whale recently shared some “Secrets of Success” with Business Matters - we hope you’ll discover some useful advice just like we did!
McKinsey’s Trends to Watch in Edtech that was released in mid-November is worth checking out – you’ll find it here!