When it comes to fundraising or types of capital, optionality has been the term du jour in the current tech environment.
The Udemy IPO might seem like good news. After all, the company sold more than $420 million worth of its stock while going public at a price that surpassed its final private-market price. And yet.
Udemy's slowing revenue growth is not bullish for edtech valuations more broadly; the company's modest resulting revenue multiple is also somewhat beige.
If we only valued Udemy on its business revenues, at its final private-market valuation, it would be worth 4.5x its Q2 2021 ARR. That's incredibly cheap.
Entrepreneurs need to convince employers to turn to edtech for a solution more elusive than even education: motivation.
CEO and co-founder Luis von Ahn returned to Disrupt this year to explain how the sophistication of public markets impacts the company's strategy.
Unlike their neighbors in fintech, it’s assumed that edtech companies need to expand to a number of big markets in order to reach a scale that makes them attractive to VCs.
Edtech's boom is rivaled by that of the creator economy, which promises to help creators monetize and democratize their passions, all while maintaining their identity.
We should expect more of the same from the Chinese government: More complaints about the impact of "excessive" capital in its industries, more tumbling share prices and more held IPOs.
Duolingo, a consumer edtech company, is now more valuable per revenue dollar than the median public enterprise SaaS business.
Edtech investors are increasingly going global, but regulatory crackdowns in China, which instructed K-12 tutoring startups to go nonprofit, have led to a chill among check-writers in the country.
Duolingo is now targeting a $95 to $100 per share IPO price range, up from $85 to $95 per share, or a gain of around 12% at the bottom and 5% at the top.
Things in China seem to be changing for the worse, in terms of both future access to foreign capital for Chinese companies and doing business in the country overall.
When it comes to control, the Chinese government doesn't mind wiping out a few dozen billion dollars in market cap here and there. That's not a great system.
We are now seeing what growth will look like at Duolingo after its COVID-bump was digested.
We are seeing a wave of private companies sweeping across parts of education and training that were previously overseen or funded centrally by governments. This is happening all across the world.
Our initial read of the edtech unicorn's filing to go public was generally positive, but we dug one level deeper to grow our understanding.
“If you’re not going to an Ivy League, which is most of the world, you need better support than just going to a website.”
Emeritus plans to acquire iD Tech, a STEM education service for children, which brings a whole different set of customers to its umbrella.
Similar to how telehealth faced declines as patients returned to in-person care, edtech will face similar drops as schools become a safer option for students and teachers.
Load More