⛷️ Our February 2023 Update
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⛷️ Our February 2023 Update
☀️ Hi friends,
We hope you are all doing well!
What caught our attention💡 this month was the new DCL regulation released last week by the US 🇺🇸 Department of Education which could create significant barriers for international edtech companies selling into US Universities. In particular, the regulation states, “To protect the interests of institutions, taxpayers, and students, a [US higher education] institution may not contract with a TPS [Third Party Servicer] to perform any aspect of the institution’s participation in a Title IV program if the servicer (or its subcontractors) is located outside of the United States or is owned or operated by an individual who is not a US citizen or national or a lawful US permanent resident.”
The services this applies to include some recruitment, data collection, software administration and classroom content, though importantly there are also clear exceptions (eg content administered entirely by the institution but made by a third party). For a more in-depth breakdown, we would refer you to analyses by Matthew Tower, WhiteBoard Advisors and Phil Hill.
The US is becoming broadly more protectionist with some surprising implications in other domains (eg the recently passed $1 trillion infrastructure legislation requires that construction equipment be sourced domestically but some needed equipment is no longer manufactured in the US). In this case it seems like foreign companies could effectively be banned from delivering a swath of educational content/services to US universities. We expect this change in policy will be challenged as it’s far-reaching and was instituted via regulation as opposed to legislation. But, if the regulation stands, Europe 🌍 is likely to follow suit and ban US edtech companies from selling similar products into UK/EU universities. This runs counter to much of the global expansion of edtech that we’ve seen over the last decade, and could make edtech more regionally focused than it was previously.
Meanwhile, a few headlines from our side that you’ll find more on in this update:
Investment Update – Sdui closes €25M Series A extension
Selected News from the Portfolio – FundamentalVR adds leading experts to advisory board
Insights – Our European Edtech Funding Report 2023
Events – The Report Launch Event and a Paris early-stage founder Meetup
Talent Wanted - Opportunities at LabLabee and La Solive
Curated Content – it’s all about podcasts to discover this time
Wishing you all a Happy Tuesday – enjoy!
The Brighteye Team
💰 INVESTMENT UPDATE
🚀 Sdui - €25M Series A extension
Our portfolio company Sdui has extended their Series A funding round to €25M, led by HV Capital and Haniel and with continued support from us, High-Tech Gründerfonds and a number of others. Sdui builds the operating system for everyday digital education and facilitates communication and organisation in schools 🏫 and daycare centres. By focusing on internationalisation and the extension of its product, the German 🇩🇪 startup will position itself more broadly as a reliable and innovative digitalisation partner for educational institutions across Europe 🌍 Well done, congrats and keep going!
Here’s our brief intro to why we invested and some media coverage from Tech.eu and Gründerszene - to pick a couple.
📣 SELECTED NEWS FROM THE PORTFOLIO
💪🏻 FundamentalVR adds 5 experts to advisory
We’re excited to learn that FundamentalVR, the global leader in immersive surgical training, has added four surgical robotics experts and a mixed-reality and machine-learning leader to their advisory board of Key Opinion Leaders. The five experts will help expand the company's Fundamental Surgery platform, enhancing its robotic and precision simulation capabilities.
🎤 Hear TeachFX at ASU+GSV
We can’t wait to take the front-row seats to hear TeachFX Founder and CEO Jamie Poskin speak in San Diego in April, on the panel “Building Teacher Pipelines and Reinventing the Role of Teacher.” Hope to see many of you out there, too!
🔎 INSIGHTS
🌍 It’s out - The European Edtech Funding Report 2023
It’s always a big day at Brighteye when we launch our annual European Edtech Funding Report. The 2023 version is the fourth of its kind and was published at the end of January.
Headlines include:
1. European Edtech showing more resilience than other major Edtech regions, though VC activity in all regions down in 2022 relative to 2021 🏋️♀️
2. UK maintains top spot in Europe and Germany and Austria make up the top 3. Italy was the only European market to see funding and deals 📈
3. 2022 was a year for Edtech specialist investors, particularly in European deals 🕵️
4. Corporate learning the only vertical to grow by total investment secured within Europe 💼
5. Angels increasingly active in Europe and now involved in more deals than any other region 😇
🙏🏻 Huge thanks to the Dealroom.co team for your support.
🗓️ The Nordic & Baltic Special
Following on from the full European report, we also partnered with the Nordic EdTech News on a Nordic & Baltic version, to be found for downloading here.
🎪 EVENTS
📺 The Report Launch event
We have also made a tradition of celebrating the launch of the European Edtech Funding Report with a digital event to hear from a panel of industry experts. This happened on 25 January, and if you missed it or want to revisit it, you can find it here:
🇫🇷 Early-stage Founder Meetup in Paris
Together with our project partner the EdTech Garage and French edtech Unowhy we are looking forward to co-hosting a meetup for early-stage European Edtech founders in Paris on Thursday 16 March, please sign up here to join!
💪🏻 TALENT WANTED
A few portfolio company job openings that may excite you this month:
LabLabee - Customer Success Manager
La Solive - assistant manager in Nantes, Brand Manager and Product engineer.
💁 CURATED CONTENT
🎙 Podcasts
The EducationNewsCast feed is a mixed English & German show with news, trends, basics around the education, training, corporate learning & new work (and what else they find interesting). In the 30-60 minute interviews posted every Monday, experts and practitioners get to have their say to give listeners inspirations. We were happy to hear our own Associate Hannes Aichmayr on Edtech Markets, startups and ecosystem in Europe at the end of January.
And on Brighteye featured on podcasts, we were delighted to have Head of Research Rhys Spence on the Edtech Insiders podcast, to talk about the State of European Edtech, alongside Beth Havinga of the European Edtech Alliance recently.
At SXSW Edu in Austin, Tx, they are doing a stage full of podcasting. You may find a few new ones to check out in the line-up here.
If you have not already, we recommend discovering EUVC Lowdown, a weekly podcast that dives into the headlines in European Venture with some of the key people of the industry.