University-Edtech Part II: The Market Map 🗺️ Transcend Newsletter #67

The most comprehensive market map of startups serving universities.

Hi there! Alberto here, joining from Madrid this week.

The Transcend Newsletter explores the intersection of the future of education and the future work, and the founders building it around the world.

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Earlier this month, we talked about the opportunity in university edtech, and the different categories we have identified in the space. In this Part II, we’ll dive into our full market map with 300+ startups, and the startups building in each space.

In the last piece, we defined University Edtech as startups that serve universities as their main customers (Read Part I here).

In this article, we will break them down one by one, using the University Edtech Market Map that we open-sourced in the last newsletter and so many of you contributed to! With almost 300 entries, we think this is one of the most comprehensive descriptions of the early-stage startups that are serving universities. For each category, we analyze its emerging startups and industry leaders, as well as the keywords most often mentioned by startups in each category.

Here are the six key categories and budgets for universities:

1. Student recruitment & admissions 📈:

2. Career Development 🎓

3. Academic content & assessment 📚

4. Student affairs & experience 🏫

5. Revenue-generators 🧑‍💻

6. LMS & technology providers 🖥️

Let’s break them down one by one:

#1: Academic content & assessment 📚

94 startups mapped

The provision of academic content and assessment is one of the most critical parts of the university experience, and thus the bar is very high for startups to operate in the space and serve university professors. Content startups usually aggregate resources (BibliU, Perlego), focus on one specific area of expertise, like Derivita (Math) or Labster (STEM) or build tools for educators to use in their classes (Genially, Kahoot, Ribbon, Antimatter). Assessment startups help professors evaluate their students (like Gradescope, Examind), and usually require integrations with LMS providers.

Keywords (mentioned by startups in the market map) : learning, student engagement, assessment, academic support, academic integrity, digital badge, digital skill

#2: Student recruitment & admissions 📈

31 startups mapped

Recruiting new students is one of the biggest areas where universities invest and partner with external players. In countries like the US, private universities will pay more than $2,000 to acquire a new student ($470 for public universities).

With increasing costs of student acquisition and decreasing public funding, universities all over the world are pushing for greater international student recruitment, which has created unicorns like ApplyBoard. Other emerging startups are building more innovative ways for students to identify universities they love, like Loper, or distributing access to international scholarships, like StudyFree.

Keywords: recruitment, admissions software, global

#3: LMS & technology providers 🖥️

55 startups mapped

These startups provide the technological infrastructure for universities to operate – from Learning Management Systems (which have a variety of learning applications all integrated within its core software), to videoconferencing applications, storing data or resources, etc. The industry leaders that dominate this space include Canvas, Articulate, and Docebo, but new players like Class, Engageli, and Coursedog are growing into unicorns in this space too.

Keywords: LMS, education platform, course management, online exam

#4: Student affairs & experience 🏫

30 startups mapped

Student affairs startups address the experience of the student outside of the classroom, following the idea that a well-rounded campus experience increases student success and retention. These startups range from maintaining student engagement and wellbeing (Mainstay, Stellic, Upswing, Vygo), to mental health (like Mantra Health, one of the main areas of opportunity for startups today) or even student financing. It’s all about meeting students where they are.

Keywords: student success, campus life, student loan, mobile engagement, communication

#5: Career Development 🎓

32 startups mapped

Universities are struggling the most with preparing students for their careers of the future, and this is where startups play a role – from connecting students to alumni and professionals (PeopleGrove, MentorCollective, Candoor), to real-life projects that improve career readiness (Forage, Riipen, Capsource) or recruitment platforms (like Handshake for universities, or CareerOS for business schools).

Keywords: Career opportunity, career development, career outcome, career readiness

#6: Revenue-generators 🧑‍💻

14 startups mapped

Universities are increasingly looking to become financially sustainable, and are open to forging partnerships with startups that can help them increase their revenue streams: OPMs help them build and market online degrees based on their own IP (2U, Noodle, Emeritus), joint course platforms like Acadeum or Rize help them serve their students with shared curricula, and others like Guild, FourthRev or Outlier take their courses and degrees to scale.

Keywords: University partnership, academic collaboration, university courses, online degrees

Conclusion

The University Edtech space is full of opportunities for startups who augment the work of universities, and these six submarkets are all brewing future unicorns in each of them!

If you are a founder building in the space or a university professor/leader, we’d love to hear from you – just reply to this email and say hi!

Part III will be the last issue of this series on university edtech: we will interview Dan Sommer, a leading founder in the space who built and scaled Trilogy to a $750M exit!

If you are currently building a startup in this space or are looking to enter the University-Edtech market, join us next Wednesday - Aug 16 for our Open Discussion on Building a University-Edtech startup with Dan Sommer!

Register for this Open Discussion for free and get a sneak peak into insights that drive the university market

Link to sign up👉 https://lu.ma/univesity-edtech

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The Roundup ☀️

• 2023 State of University-Edtech (Part I) - Read newsletter

• MagicSchool (Adeel Khan - TF11) launched its AI-Resistant Assignment Suggestions tool - Launch announcement here.

• Meet the latest cohort of Transcend Fellows (TF11)! Cohort announcement here.

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