Emerge Education is a European seed fund investing in founders solving the $8.5tn skills gap. Emerge provides founders with unrivalled education sector insights, as they're the only fund backed by the world’s foremost education entrepreneurs.

Emerge Education

LocalGlobe is a UK-based venture capital firm that focuses on seed and impact investments. Seeding ambitious UK founders since 1999 inc Citymapper, Improbable, Lovefilm, Moo, Tweetdeck, Transferwise, and Zoopla.

LocalGlobe

Entrepreneur First is the place where the ambitious come together to build globally important technology companies. Through our platform running in 6 cities across 3 continents, we invest in high-potential individuals to help them meet their co-founder, develop their ideas and secure funding from leading investors in the shortest possible time.   We have built over 300 companies from scratch; have over 5000 alumni worldwide; and our portfolio is valued at over $5bn. EF companies include Tractable (Computer Vision, currently valued at $1bn as of June 2021), Magic Pony Technology (AI, acquired by Twitter for a reported $150m), Represent (social commerce, acquired by CustomInk), BloomsburyAI (acquired by Facebook), Cleo (fintech), OpenCosmos (space), CloudNC (manufacturing), Transcelestial (satellite communications) and many more. We're backed by some of the world's best tech founders and investors, including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Greylock Partners, Founders Fund, Demis Hassabis (Google Deepmind) and Taavet Hinrikus (Wise). For more information about Entrepreneur First, visit www.joinef.com.

Entrepreneur First

ADV is a patient venture investment engine. Its team are entrepreneurs and operators who have learnt the hard lessons and want to pay them forward. Currently investing £150M, ADV takes the long view of business building, investing across the funding lifecycle of startups, scaleups and ‘scalebigs’. ADV champions the innovators - the people who build complex, technical, generation-defining businesses. ADV’s investors are British Business Bank, Legal & General and Woodford Investment Management.

We invest in early stage technology businesses and, in exceptional cases, will create them from scratch with outstanding partners. We pride ourselves on being open minded and ready to support ideas orthogonal to consensus views.

Delin Ventures

We're Acequia Capital, a company and partnership based in Seattle with expertise in tech investments. We're seasoned industry partners and systems thinkers in product strategy, business models, and market entry. We're in good company with founding teams in most industries, mainly in the US, UK, and Europe.

Acequia Capital (AceCap)

North Summit Capital  is a tech-intrinsic investment firm, offering resourceful capital and domain-specific AI solutions for the digital transformation of the traditional industries.

North Summit Capital

Lingumi

Lingumi is an education technology company that offers a pre-school English language learning system for parents and children. The company's platform offers mobile-based software, enabling pre-school children to learn foreign languages including sounds, words and phrases through games and playful methods.

<div><p>Lingumi offers an English-learning course for two to six year-olds. Lessons are designed in-house and delivered using interactive learning games, artificial intelligence (AI) voice technology, and tasks. The company’s objective is to support parents in their efforts to teach their children English as a foreign language at home, before they start school.</p></div>

Remote learning is driving an education technology revolution.

EdTech: K-12

<div>
  <p>
    Lingumi offers an English-learning course for two to six year-olds. Lessons are designed in-house and delivered using interactive learning games, artificial intelligence (AI) voice technology, and tasks. The company’s objective is to support parents in their efforts to teach their children English as a foreign language at home, before they start school.
  </p>
  <p>
    Each 15-minute lesson comprises three steps: activities to learn new words and phrases and practice pronunciation, a question to be replied with a voice or video recording, and a lesson report card.
  </p>
  <p>
    The first Lingumi course was launched in China in 2019, and as of October 2020, the platform was being used by more than 100,000 families in several countries including China, Taiwan, the UK, Germany, Italy, and France.
  </p>
  <p>
    In April 2020, the company raised USD 5.19 million in a funding round led by China-based technology fund North Summit Capital, and also announced the launch of free daily activity packs and videos to support families during the Covid-19 pandemic.
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    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.
  </p>
  <p>
    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.
  </p>
  <p>
    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.
  </p>
</div>


BookNook

<div>
  <p>
    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. 
  </p>
  <p>
    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.
  </p>
  <p>
    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.
  </p>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


Story2

<div>
  <p>
    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.
  </p>
  <p>
    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.
  </p>
  <p>
    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.
  </p>
  <p>
    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.
  </p>
</div>


Vooks

<div>
  <p>
    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.
  </p>
</div>


Xeropan

<div>
  <p>
    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.  
  </p>
  <p>
    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">
      <u>TutorMe,</u>
    </a>
     Zovio’s tutoring services business, for USD 55 million in cash to strengthen its product offering. 
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Funding and financials</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    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. 
  </p>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


GoGuardian

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

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

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

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

Lingumi

EdTech: K-12

Key stats

EDGE Insights

New regulations impact China's child-focused industries

Company Brief

Funding

Investors

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless