{"id":20782,"date":"2020-11-02T14:19:49","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T19:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/booming-edtech-ma-activity-brings-consolidation-to-a-fragmented-sector\/"},"modified":"2020-11-02T14:19:49","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T19:19:49","slug":"booming-edtech-ma-activity-brings-consolidation-to-a-fragmented-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/booming-edtech-ma-activity-brings-consolidation-to-a-fragmented-sector\/","title":{"rendered":"Booming edtech M&#038;A activity brings consolidation to a fragmented sector"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"8ad62c3a0ef3fdfd37e330a4d3170eb2\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- first 1 -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6893006633895851\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3313541086\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>\t\t\t\tAs the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force teachers, students and parents to adopt new technologies, edtech\u2019s total addressable market has massively grown in the last several months. The shift has urged venture capitalists to pour money into the sector accordingly, ushering a number of startups into the unicorn club.<br \/>\nBut maturation doesn\u2019t just mean bigger checks and high-flying unicorns \u2014 it also brings exits.<br \/>\nEdtech M&#038;A activity is buzzier than usual: In the last week, Course Hero,  a startup that sells Netflix-like subscriptions to students looking for learning and teaching content, bought Symbolab,  an artificial intelligence-powered calculator. Saga Education, a tutoring nonprofit backed by Comcast, the Bill &#038; Melinda Gates Foundation and others, acquired math software platform Woot Math. We also saw PowerSchool, which sells a suite of software services to manage schools, scoop up Hoonuit, a data management and analytics tool for educators. Finally, K-12 curriculum company Discovery Education bought K-5 science and stem curriculum upstart Mystery Science.<br \/>\nIt\u2019s a lot of news in a short period of time. Luckily, these consolidations offer some directional guidance regarding where some edtech businesses think the future of their industry is headed.<br \/>\nSmart content as a competitive advantage<br \/>\nContent, to an extent, is commoditized. If you can find a free tutorial on Youtube or Khan Academy,  buy a subscription to an edtech platform that offers the same solution? The commodification of education is good for end-users and is often why startups have a freemium model as a customer acquisition strategy. To convert free users into paying subscribers, edtech startups need to offer differentiated and targeted content.<\/p>\n<p>The Course Hero and Mystery Science deals show us that edtech businesses are hungry for personalized, targeted content. Course Hero\u2019s acquisition of Symbolab was essentially a deal for more than a decade\u2019s worth of data that captured which math questions students found hardest.<br \/>\nSymbolab is a math calculator that is set to answer over 1 billion questions this year. With each answer, Symbolab adds information to its algorithm regarding students\u2019 most common pain points and confusion. Course Hero, in contrast, is a broader service that focuses on Q&#038;A from a variety of subjects. CEO Andrew Grauer says Symbolab\u2019s algorithm isn\u2019t something that Course Hero, which has been operating since 2006, can drum up overnight. That\u2019s precisely why he \u201cdecided to buy, instead of build.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cIt made a lot of sense to move fast enough so it wouldn\u2019t take up multiple years to get this technology,\u201d Grauer said. The deal was made as big companies get in the Q&#038;A game too, he noted. Google  acquired homework helper app Socratic in 2019 and Microsoft  built Microsoft Solver in the same year.<br \/>\nDiscovery Education, a curriculum provider for K-12 classrooms, acquired San Francisco-based K-5 STEM curriculum provider, Mystery Science. Discovery Education has launched a series of other products focused on science education, including Discovery Education Experience, the Science Techbook series and STEM Connect.\u202f However, Mystery Science is largely focused on offering a creative digital solution to science education. The programming, a mix of videos, prompts and projects, cover a range of questions such as, \u201cWhere do rivers flow?\u201d and \u201cCould a volcano pop up where you live?\u201d for young students.<br \/>\nMystery Science CEO and founder Keith Schact explained how his product focuses on kids and educators, while Discovery Education focuses on educators and districts, making the deal feel like a \u201cnatural marriage.\u201d Even as edtech goes directly to consumers, Schact remains bullish on the role that institutions play in true adoption of technology.<br \/>\n\u201cYou can go straight to teachers and get a certain market share,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the institutions still do have a big role.\u201d The founder likened the dynamic to the state of media: With the rise of blogs, you can publish directly and reach an engaged audience, but writers who want a bigger positioning tend to join larger platforms to grow their overall reach. Edtech is the same, in that some startups need an official sign-off from schools before they can reach venture-scale returns.<br \/>\nAccording to a source familiar with the transaction, Mystery Science was sold for $175 million after only raising $4 million in venture financing.<br \/>\nUsing data management and analytics to improve student outcomes\t\t\t<\/p><div class=\"8ad62c3a0ef3fdfd37e330a4d3170eb2\" data-index=\"2\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6893006633895851\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- 2nd display -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6893006633895851\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"2190937813\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force teachers, students and parents to adopt new technologies, edtech\u2019s total addressable market has massively grown in the last several months. The shift has urged venture capitalists to pour money into the sector accordingly, ushering a number of startups into the unicorn club. But maturation doesn\u2019t just mean bigger&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":20783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11904],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/20782\/booming-edtech-ma-activity-brings-consolidation-to-a-fragmented-sector.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7w8St-5pc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20782"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morningsidemaryland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}