38 min listen
Equity Dive: Edtech’s 2020 wakeup call
FromEquity
ratings:
Length:
26 minutes
Released:
Nov 26, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week, we're doing a first-ever for the show and taking a deep dive into one specific sector: Edtech.Natasha Mascarenhas has covered education technology since Stanford first closed down classes in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. In the wake of the historic shuttering of much of the United States' traditional institutions of education, the sector has formed new unicorns, attracted record-breaking venture capital totals, and most of all, enjoyed time in a long-overdue spotlight.For this Equity Dive, we zero into one part of that conversation: Edtech's impact on higher education. We brought together Udacity co-founder and Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun, Eschaton founder and college drop-out Ian Dilick, and Cowboy Ventures investor Jomayra Herrera to answer our biggest questions.Here's what we got into:How the state of remote school is leading to gap years among studentsA framework for how to think of higher education's main three products (including which is most defensible over time)What learnings we can take from this COVID-19 experiment on remote schooling to apply to the futureWhy ed-tech is flocking to the notion of life-long learningAnd the reality of who self-paced learning serves -- and who it leaves outAnd much, much more. If you celebrate, thank you for spending part of your Thanksgiving with the Equity crew. We're so thankful to have this platform and audience, and it means a ton that y'all tune in each week.Finally, if you liked this format and want to see more, feel free to tweet us your thoughts or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Talk soon!
Released:
Nov 26, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Edtech is the new SaaS: The whole crew was back, with Natasha Mascarenhas and Danny Crichton and myself chattering with Chris Gates behind the scenes making it all work. An extra shoutout to Natasha this week as we spent a lot of time talking about edtech, a category that she spearheads for us and has brought to the show. It's a big deal! We're on YouTube now, don't forget, and with that, let's get into the news: Climax Foods raised $7.5 million to help fuel its work to develop alt-foods that are not animal-based. The Equity crew votes that this is a tasty deal. And, Capchase has raised $4.6 million to help cash-out SaaS contracts ahead of their real revenue accrual. Our read is that more financing options for SaaS companies will lead to lower costs of capital for those startups that want it. And, the Envision Accelerator made it through batch one and is on to batch two. Then we chatted about edtech, with Natasha talking us through Owl Ventures raising huge new funds, Course Hero ext by Equity