Emerge Education in 2018: the story so far
Every month, we come across 500 to 1,000 new edtech startups around the world. Our initial DD leads to around 10 conversations a week with founders working on anything from early years education to solutions for schools and universities to corporate learning platforms. The cream of the crop are invited to our Edspace HQ in London for a pitch before the selection committee: our dedicated group of business angels, successful education entrepreneurs, and corporate investment partners.
What we look for is a rare combination of factors: an evidence-based approach to a keenly-felt global problem in education; a great team and technology platform that means the solution has the potential to have a positive impact for millions of people; and a commercial product that appeals to buyers in the education market by solving their needs in a unique and powerful way.
This year alone, our venture hunter team has spoken to over 300 candidates. Following every stage of due diligence and following the selection comittee, we have made 7 investments amounting to a total of just over half a million GBP.
In this post, we wanted to share with you these companies and some of their achievements. Without further ado:
Causaly
🗺 Mapping the world through cause-and-effect
Causaly uses natural language processing to identify cause-and-effect links described by authors in published scientific research and rank their confidence. At an early stage, the focus is primarily on biomedical research and oncology, with a view to expanding the platform so that these links would be browsable by users across many disciplines. The team has established relationships with major pharmaceutical research centres and scientific publishers across Europe, helping them ‘read’ tens of thousands of papers in minutes.
Looking for: machine-learning specialists and front-end developers.
OpenCampus
📌 Higher education’s next operating system
A modular Drupal-based system that allows university administrators to quickly move from paper-based to digital processes for anything from admissions to student record management to lecture scheduling, in one case saving a university 14.4 admin hours per student per year. By implementing the OpenCampus system, institutions gain a joined-up, transparent, and centralized view of the entire student journey. 30 university clients in Germany and gaining early traction in the UK.
Looking for: Drupal developers and senior salespeople with higher ed experience in the UK.
Schema
📓 Collaborative and structured study notes for a new generation of students
Recently launched at the University of Oxford, this is a collaborative, fully searchable note-taking platform for students. Schema makes it easy for students to structure, visualize, and manage their study notes, gradually building up a high-quality database of learning materials supplemented by peer insight. With next to no marketing and an early version of the product, the platform grew to 3,000 student users and 15,000 notes within 3 months after launch.
Looking for: lead developer
TeacherGaming
👾 Turning blockbuster games into teaching resources
Built by the team behind MinecraftEDU, which turned the immensely popular game into an effective teaching tool, this service offers curriculum-linked and cross-curricular content built around high-quality games students already play in their spare time. As a result, students between ages of 11 and 19 become more engaged in the learning process while educators save time on lesson planning.
Yoto
🔊 A clever speaker for learning and play
A different take on interactive media without screens that’s smart, safe, and lots of fun. Children control the playful cube by slotting in physical cards that unlock an amazing library of curated audio content, built in partnership with the Roald Dahl Literary Estate. Yoto’s Kickstarter campaign hit its target in 5 days and was funded over 150% by the time it closed.
Looking for: Javascript and mobile developers, UX/UI designer.
Wonda VR
😎 Immersive video for publishers and universities
A suite of easy-to-use editing tools for creating virtual reality immersive video content for higher education. WondaVR can be used by lecturers or learning technologists to transform 360° videos and other media into educational VR content with no prior training and is compatible with a wide range of VR hardware. Used by learning technologists at over 300 institutions.
Looking for: Full-stack developers.
Unibuddy
🙋♀️ Connecting prospects with current students in HE
Unibuddy gives universities a simple way to connect prospective applicants and future students to current student ambassadors. Applicants choose who they want to talk to by subject, year, or background and get to hear the answers to questions that matter the most to them from peers with first-hand experience of the institution. With implementation as easy as adding a line of code to the website, Unibuddy are already used by several dozen institutions in the UK, building on the growing recognition that the student voice is key to the success of both students and institutions.
🤭 (nothing to see here — for now)
…and one more project we’re not quite ready to share yet — but watch this space!
So what happens next?
As we’ve written before, 2018 has been a year of change at Emerge as we move away from the accelerator model to provide individual support to new portfolio companies that gives them the best start on their edtech journey.
So far in 2018, we have made more than 150 one-to-one introductions to decision-makers in education and government, industry experts, or fellow entrepreneurs. Our webinars ranging in topic from investor relations and fundraising to B2B and B2C sales, GDPR compliance, and UX design saw more than 150 attendees. And every new investment received regular hands-on coaching using our unique diagnostic model to identify key opportunities for improvement and work through potential solutions. We have learnt a lot and will continue to iterate and improve on how we support the startups Emerge Education invests in.
Do you want to become an Emerge Education company? Reach out to us at emerge.education.
