8 edtech investors talk re-skilling, digital universities, ISAs and other post-pandemic trends

Published July 16, 2020

We know that the coronavirus has brought unprecedented attention to the edtech market, but now what? What happens when schools are no longer clambering toward an overnight solution? When the surges slow? When our world reopens and there doesn’t need to be a full-suite of at-home solutions for kids and parents?

As the next wave of edtech companies are being built to address these novel use cases, investors are looking for solutions that aren’t simply pandemic-era important. To some, that means skipping the latest videoconferencing platform play and maybe cutting a check to a digital-only university. To others, it means looking for the platform that will educate a diverse range of users, especially the unemployed.

A spree of recent consolidation within the market shows that there is a need for a better plumbing system in the fragmented world of edtech.

We turned to eight investors in the space to understand which subcategories are shaping up to be the future, following up on our first survey last fall when the world was very different, and another in early April when less was understood about the pandemic. Our goal here was to find nonobvious ways innovation is living within the noisier-than-ever sector. The result? Intel on nascent trends, deal-makers and what adaption looks like amid a time of uncertainty.

Today you’ll get a deep dive on the nerdy stuff from the following investors:

Reach Capital’s Jennifer Carolan, Shauntel Garvey and Chian Gong
Ian Chiu, Owl Ventures
Jan Lynn-Matern, Emerge Education
David Eichler, TCV
Rebecca Kaden, Union Square Ventures
Jomayra Herrera, Cowboy Ventures

Investors differed on which subcategories benefitted the most, but it’s clear that the pandemic didn’t lift up the entirety of the edtech space. One investor noted that the pandemic made them even less interested in ISAs, while other venture capitalists noted how valuable the financing instrument is now, more than ever before.

We got into some of the big themes that have risen in the past few months: online learning, re-skilling, ISAs, virtual universities and where each investor draws their line around these categories.

A common theme throughout the commentary now is that the opportunity presented by coronavirus is not being met with complacency, but instead a push to grow better. Investors talked about innovation needs to account for childcare, cost, digital infrastructure, and the addressable population, pandemic or not.

I think that’s enough teasing. Now, onto the answers.

It’s a new era for fertility tech

Published February 28, 2019

Women’s health has long been devoid of technological innovation, but when it comes to fertility options, that’s starting to change. Startups in the space are securing hundreds of millions in venture capital investment, a significant increase to the dearth of funding collected in previous years.

Fertility entrepreneurs are focused on a growing market: couples are choosing to reproduce later in life, an increasing number of female breadwinners are able to make their own decisions about when and how to reproduce, and overall, around 10% of women in the US today have trouble conceiving, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Startups, as a result, are working to improve various pain points in a women’s fertility journey, whether that be with new-age brick-and-mortar clinics, information platforms, mobile applications, wearables, direct-to-consumer medical tests or otherwise.

Although the investment numbers are still relatively small (compared to, say, scooters), the trend is up — here’s the latest from founders and investors in the space.

VCs want to help you get pregnant

Clue, a period and ovulation-tracking app, co-founder and CEO Ida Tin talks at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2017 (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

This fall, TechCrunch received a tip that SoftBank, a prolific venture capital firm known for its nearly $100 billion Vision Fund, was investing in Glow, a period-tracking app meant to help women get pregnant. Max Levchin, Glow’s co-founder and a well-known member of the PayPal mafia, succinctly responded to a TechCrunch inquiry regarding the deal via e-mail: “Fairly sure you got this particular story wrong,” he wrote. Glow co-founder and chief executive officer Mike Huang did not respond to multiple requests for comment at the time.

Needless to say, some semblance of a SoftBank fertility deal got this reporter interested in a space that seldom populates tech blogs.

Femtech, a term coined by Ida Tin, the founder of another period and ovulation-tracking app Clue, is defined as any software, diagnostics, products and services that leverage technology to improve women’s health. Femtech, and more specifically the businesses in the fertility and contraception lanes, hasn’t made headlines as often as AI or blockchain technology has, for example. Probably because companies in the sector haven’t closed as many notable venture deals. That’s changing.

The global fertility services market is expected to exceed $21 billion by 2020, according to Technavio. Meanwhile, private investment in the femtech space surpassed $400 million in 2018 after reaching a high of $354 million the previous year, per data collected from PitchBook and Crunchbase. This year already several companies have inked venture deals, including men’s fertility business Dadi and Extend Fertility, which helps women freeze their eggs.

“In the last three to six months, it feels like investor interest has gone through the roof,” Jake Anderson-Bialis, co-founder of FertilityIQ and a former investor at Sequoia Capital, told TechCrunch. “It’s three to four emails a day; people are coming out of the woodwork. It feels like somebody shook the snow globe here and it just hasn’t stopped for months now.”

Dadi, Extend Fertility and FertilityIQ are among a growing list of startups in the fertility space to crop up in recent years. FertilityIQ, for its part, provides a digital platform for fertility patients to research and review doctors and clinics. The company also collects data and issues reports, like this one, which ranked businesses by fertility benefits. Anderson-Bialis launched the platform with his wife, co-founder Deborah Anderson-Bialis, in 2016 after the pair overcame their own set of infertility issues.

Anderson-Bialis said he has recently fielded requests from seed, Series A and growth-stage investors interested in exploring the growing fertility market. His company, however, has yet to raise any outside capital. Why? He doesn’t see FertilityIQ as a venture-scale business, but rather a passion project, and he’s skeptical of the true market opportunity for other businesses in the space.