Ulu Ventures is a leading seed-stage venture fund in Silicon Valley investing in diverse entrepreneurial teams as well as Enterprise IT, EdTech, FinTech, Healthcare, and Sustainability startups.  Ulu is the first Latina-led venture fund in Silicon Valley and is one of the largest in the country with over $200M in assets under management. As well, the firm has designed its investment process to reduce risk and produce better, more consistent returns. Ulu’s process structures intuition and applies it intelligently to investments, avoiding cognitive biases common in VC; systematically identifies key drivers of risk and uncertainty, streamlining due diligence; and calculates a probability-weighted multiple(PWM) on invested capital, ensuring consistent decision-making.

Ulu Ventures

New Markets Venture Partners is a leading, early and growth-stage, double bottom-line investor based in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area. New Markets makes direct investments in transformative education and workforce technology companies, which leads to superior financial returns and positive social impact. Each of our partners has many decades of investment and education experience. We maintain proprietary relationships with states, districts, universities and other centers of innovation that allow us to provide exceptional value to our portfolio companies. We help our companies succeed by adding value before, during, and after the investment process.

New Markets Venture Partners

Blue Heron Capital invests in small-cap growth equity companies in healthcare and tech-enabled business services. The company believes in acting as committed partners to build value for companies and returns for their investors. Their firm brings strategic capital, industry expertise and a powerful network to support companies. Blue Heron Capital is an operationally focused investment firm based in Richmond, Virginia. The company firmly believes that people make the difference in building great companies. Therefore, Blue Heron Capital only invests in companies where they have deep, relevant experience and can play an active role in the oversight of the business.

Blue Heron Capital

Catamount Ventures focuses on investing in early stage startups. They back world-class entrepreneurs with a plan to change the world through innovation and creativity. Their capital, connections, and coaching help grow category leaders with a strong mission at their core.

Catamount Ventures

Allen & Company is a family-owned investment and advisory firm. The firm advises on M&A and capital raises, with an emphasis on the technology, media, healthcare, and sports sectors. Allen & Company was established in 1932 and is headquartered in New York, United States.

Allen & Company

Calvert Group Ltd., known in 1976 as the Government Securities Management Company (GSMC), was brought to life by two young entrepreneurs driven by the need for change and creativity. While conventional investment strategies at the time recommended putting capital into low-interest-bearing savings accounts, former college friends D. Wayne Silby and John G. Guffey, Jr., saw the opportunity to create a higher-yielding money market fund available to the general public. In 1976, they introduced the First Variable Rate Fundâ€”the first variable-rate money fund in the countryâ€”that sought to combine short-term, fixed-rate securities with long-term, variable-rate securities to provide attractive yields, as well as a strong measure of safety.

Calvert Social Venture Partners

Across five funds and two decades, we've helped build numerous successful companies such as Cvent (event management - IPO) , TenMarks (math tutoring - acquired by Amazon) CyOptics (optical chips - acquired by Avago), Neolinear (EDA - acquired by Cadence), and FreeMarkets (B2B marketplace - IPO).  We believe great companies can start anywhere (but to scale quickly they may require a coastal presence), and the best engineers and scientists do not go to just a few schools on each coast.  These core principles lead us to invest in companies from across the country overlooked by many other investors, uncovering hidden gems and helping them scale up.

Birchmere Ventures

Catalyst employs a research-driven deal flow origination process to identify high-growth sectors and businesses within technology-enabled services.  Catalyst targets  growth-stage businesses with proven business models and attractive unit economics and sectors that are being driven by fundamental, long-term growth trends and have substantial addressable markets.  Catalyst makes both control and influential minority investments, typically has meaningful influence and board representation, and seeks to create value after investment through active involvement in creating, evaluating, and monitoring a portfolio company's business strategy, performance against budget, acquisition efforts, and capital structure evolution.  Catalyst leverages its Advisory Group of seasoned industry professionals to provide portfolio companies with access to experienced industry executives and referrals to potential customers or strategic partners.

Catalyst Investors

Bain Capital Double Impact builds great companies that deliver both competitive financial returns and meaningful, measureable social and environmental good.Impact investing has the power to build great companies that deliver both competitive financial returns and meaningful, measurable social and environmental good. Bain Capital Double Impact will pursue investments where they can utilize their unique capabilities to help mission-driven companies scale and drive meaningful change.

Bain Capital Double Impact Fund

PresenceLearning

PresenceLearning makes live, online special education related services available to K-12 students around the United States. As the leader in the delivery of clinical services via the web, PresenceLearning has provided over 2.5 million teletherapy sessions.  Services include speech-language therapy, occupational therapy, behavioral interventions and mental health services, assessments, and early childhood services.

Founded in 2009, PresenceLearning is a provider of live, online special education-related services including speech-language therapy, behavioral and mental health therapy, occupational therapy, and psychoeducational assessments for K-12 students and school districts. Therapy and assessment sessions are delivered by the company's network of licensed clinicians over PresenceLearning’s proprietary teletherapy platform. The company also supports school-based special-education teams through the Telehealth Institute and live, online training programs, enabling them to conduct their own online services for students over the PresenceLearning platform. As of December 2020, the company had delivered more than 2.5 million teletherapy sessions across US schools through its network of more than 1,000 certified clinicians.

Remote learning is driving an education technology revolution.

EdTech: K-12

K-12 Dealmaking: PresenceLearning Acquires Virtual School Teletherapy Provider; Byju’s Snaps Up Interactive Math Tool

Founded in 2009, PresenceLearning is a provider of live, online special education-related services including speech-language therapy, behavioral and mental health therapy, occupational therapy, and psychoeducational assessments for K-12 students and school districts. Therapy and assessment sessions are delivered by the company's network of licensed clinicians over PresenceLearning’s proprietary teletherapy platform. The company also supports school-based special-education teams through the Telehealth Institute and live, online training programs, enabling them to conduct their own online services for students over the PresenceLearning platform. As of December 2020, the company had delivered more than 2.5 million teletherapy sessions across US schools through its network of more than 1,000 certified clinicians.PresenceLearning developed the Teletherapy Essentials platform in response to the proliferation of online- and hybrid-learning models due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The platform is designed to train and support school-based clinicians as they serve students remotely. The company became a corporate partner of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in July 2021, allowing speech-language pathologists access to PresenceLearning’s teletherapy tools and content library.In May 2020, the company raised USD 27 million in a Series D funding round to expand its online therapy and assessment services.

Founded in 2016, BookNook is an online literacy platform designed for learners in grades 1-5. Partnering with school districts and non-profit organizations, the company focuses on human-to-human learning and works with children one-on-one or in small groups, enabling it to gather rich, observational data. As of June 2021, the company partnered with hundreds of schools, school districts, and non-profits across 35 states.BookNook differs from other digital literacy tools by not requiring students to take formative assessments to check for their understanding. Rather, the platform lets teachers record qualitative data on oral fluency, such as whether a student pauses at punctuation marks as they read aloud, or reads in set phrases. Students can also record self-reflections on the platform.In June 2021, the company partnered with MIND Research Institute, a neuroscience and education social impact organization and creator of the PreK-8 visual instructional program ST Math, to deliver a High Dosage Tutoring program (HDT) for math to K-8 students to address unfinished learning. BookNook tutors will deliver tutoring sessions using the ST Math program over BookNook’s synchronous learning platform. The company launched a new teacher application portal at booknooktutor.com in October 2021, giving experienced teachers the opportunity to apply to become BookNook virtual tutors on its platform. BookNook intends to engage 10,000 virtual teachers to support 80,000 students by the end of the 2021-2022 school year.

BookNook

Story2 uses its proprietary Moments Method writing system, its StoryBuilder software, and live online group coaching to help high school students and professionals improve their writing, speaking, storytelling, and collaboration skills.The company aims to help different segments with their specific needs: students with college admission and scholarship essays, professionals preparing for interviews and creating cover letters, and business teams to improve sales, recruiting and company messaging through effective storytelling.Since 2013, Story2 has worked with more than 200,000 individuals in 21 countries with college admission essays, interview preparation, and pitching ideas. The company is expanding into China and India in 2020 and plans to focus on helping science and technology students improve their communication and leadership skills.

Story2

<div>
 
 Vooks offers a subscription-based, ad-free curated library of children's books converted to video with narration and some slow-paced animation, allowing children to read along while watching. Aimed at young children aged 6 months to 8 years, Vooks promotes reading aloud to develop fluency and comprehension. The company was founded by siblings Marshall Bex and Shannon Bex, and Russell Hirtzel, and is reportedly the first-ever streaming service for books with illustrations, read-along text and animations.
 
 
 In February 2020, Vooks raised USD 12 million in Series A funding; however, the investors and purpose of the funding were not disclosed. In November 2020, the company raised USD 21.9 million in equity investments from more than 30 investors.
 
 
 In November 2020, Vooks partnered with United Way of Metropolitan Dallas (UWMD), a community-based, nonprofit social change organization, and Atmos Energy, a natural gas distributor, to provide around 78,000 one-year Vooks subscriptions for children aged 3 to 6 and early education teachers in the Greater Dallas area. The program is funded by a USD 1 million contribution from Atmos Energy, and contributes to UWMD’s Aspire United 2030 education goal of increasing the number of North Texas students reading at grade level by third grade by 50%. Similarly, in March 2021, the company partnered with Reach Out and Read Of Greater New York (ROR GNY), a nonprofit organization of healthcare providers who promote early literacy. The partnership aims to provide more than 75,000 preschool children with one-year Vooks subscriptions starting in March 2021.
 
 
 In July 2021, it was reported that Vooks is offering its service to authors and producers as a way of quickly testing ideas with audiences through simple animated shorts. Thereby, Vooks expands its library of original content while authors and producers get real-time performance data.
 
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Vooks

Xeropan offers an AI-powered, game-based approach to learning English through 14 of the most widely-spoken languages. As of October 2020, the app had more than one million players.

Xeropan

<div>
 
 GoGuardian is a provider of student security software solutions to help educators identify learning patterns, protect students from harmful and distracting content, and support students at risk of self-harm and suicide. As of August 2021, the company had partnered with more than 10,000 schools in the US, covering more than 22 million students.  
 
 
 In November 2020, GoGuardian announced a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/1863">
 merger with Pear Deck
 </a>
 to deepen the support provided to students and teachers and improve their in-class experience. Founded in 2014, Pear Deck is a student engagement platform that allows teachers to create, edit, and launch multimedia content and formative assessments on students' devices to increase student engagement. At the time of the merger, Pear Deck was used by 8 million educators and students in more than 17,000 schools worldwide. Pear Deck co-founder and Chief Educator, Michal Eynon-Lynch, will join the GoGuardian Board of Directors. In May 2022, the company acquired 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10683">
 TutorMe,
 </a>
 Zovio’s tutoring services business, for USD 55 million in cash to strengthen its product offering. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In August 2021, GoGuardian secured a USD 200 million investment from Tiger Global Management. The funds will be allocated for product innovation, talent acquisition, and business development. 
 
 
 
</div>

GoGuardian

Businesses providing education delivery solutions such as learning management systems (LMS), and tech solutions for data analytics, administration, and other services to educational institutions.

Businesses delivering curriculum-based learning, particularly relating to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education to educational institutions and individual students.

Mostly for-profit corporations running state-funded, tuition-free schools as an alternative to traditional public schools.

Businesses providing extra-curricular education relating to the arts, hobbies, and life skills, and entities providing college and career guidance.

Businesses delivering English language arts (ELA) education, and language learning and literacy support to educational institutions and individual students.

Platforms providing students with after-school tutoring support on an individual or group basis.

Businesses delivering early childhood education, special education, and social-emotional learning (SEL) programs to educational institutions and individual students.

Entities providing professional development resources and tools for teachers, and those providing testing and assessment solutions to educational institutions and educators.

Platforms providing student-parent-teacher-school communication and networking solutions, and those providing search, reference, and marketplace solutions.

Companies that use GenAI as a core part of their product offering for EdTech: K12 solutions

Uses GenAI to provide interactive AI tutors, create personallized learning pathways,  and gamified learning solutions

Uses AI/ML to create personalized learning plans, adaptive learning platforms, and intelligent tutoring systems

Adaptive learning platforms, personalized learning plans, and AI-powered analytics provide insight into student performance

Learning platforms that promote an inclusive and equitable educational culture for underserved communities

PresenceLearning

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