GSV Impact

For over 25 years, our North Star has been that ALL people deserve equal access to the future.
GSV Ventures seeks to partner with transformative companies and entrepreneurs democratizing quality education and knowledge.

Who We Are

GSV’s founders have been working together for over 25 years. Their focus in education innovation dates back to 1996, when GSV co-founder Michael Moe published the seminal white paper “Dawn of the Age of Knowledge” and predicted how the growing knowledge economy and the emergence of internet would come to transform how ALL people learn. Since then, GSV has been at the center of the education sector’s global transformation and invested in over 100 digital learning companies. GSV also co-founded the ASU+GSV Summit in partnership with Arizona State University, which has become the sector’s leading event convening over 25,000 global leaders over the last 15 years.
Over the last two decades, GSV has published 10+ sector white papers, convened over 25,000 global sector leaders, and invested in 100+ digital learning companies.

25 Years of Impact

Over the last two decades, GSV has published 10+ sector white papers, convened over 25,000 global sector leaders, and invested in 100+ digital learning companies.

Where We Invest

Thesis-Driven Investing In Learning From Pre-K to Gray

For over 25 years, our North Star has been that ALL people deserve equal access to the future.
GSV Ventures seeks to partner with transformative companies and entrepreneurs democratizing quality education and knowledge.

Hollywood Meets
Harvard

Engagement is critical to learning. Deeply engaging learning experiences will capture the quality and story-telling of Hollywood.

Robo-Ed

Use of modern AI/ML technologies to radically democratize access and accelerate learning and teaching.

Invisible Learning

Learning that is subtly and authentically infused into play and other activities.

Education as an Export

Shift toward “borderlessness” with international entrepreneurs increasingly driving global demand.

Employers as 4th Education System

Educating employees has benefits beyond closing skills gaps — attracting better talent, higher employee retention and more.

Weapons of Mass Instruction

Unprecedented scale now achievable thanks to global access to the internet, computers, and mobile phones.

Identifying “Stars of Tomorrow”

Developed by Michael Moe and GSV, our “5P’s Framework” offers a systematic and repeatable tool to identify the most transformational companies and teams — those with the most differentiated People, Product, Potential, Predictability, and Purpose.
People
  • Passionate and vision-driven founders
  • Experience and reputation of the founding team, advisors, clients, board, etc.
  • Ability to recruit and develop talent, hiring and compensation philosophies, management equity
  • Strategic strengths
Product
  • Disruptive products
  • Bet on innovators, not imitators - What’s the claim to fame?
  • Market share. What is it, and is it trending up or down?
  • Offer better products (along with higher and more sustainable margins or stronger and more visible growth)
  • Can this be a one-of-a-kind company?
Potential
  • “How big can this opportunity be?”
  • Large addressable markets or nascent growth opportunities with open-ended growth
  • Avoid companies experiencing the headwinds of “mega-trends” or secular shifts that lead to a shrinking market opportunity
Predictability
  • Are operating results predictable, and is there a path to achieve profitable economic scaling?
  • For those companies that have begun to monetize, are there recurring revenues, or is there a formula that produces predictable returns?
  • Do they gain operating leverage as they continue to achieve economies of scale?
Purpose
  • Delivering a high Return on Education or “ROE”: lowering cost, increasing access, improving outcomes, and/or driving leverage for learning leaders
  • Clear mission or north star that the team collectively strives towards
  • Have a passion for the problem they are solving and steers the culture toward finding the optimal solution

Measuring Impact (Return on Education)

Throughout the investment cycle, we look for and monitor a company’s “Return on Education”. We believe those with the
highest ROE will ultimately be the most successful. Specifically, we look at a company’s impact on cost, access, learner
outcomes, and the leverage they provide for learning leaders
Impact is deeply aligned with our mission of creating equal opportunity for all. We also believe over the long term that the
best-performing companies will be those with the strongest “Return on Education”. Evaluating a business’s real or potential
impact is a critical part of our company filtering and diligence. GSV analyzes Return on Education across five areas:
When companies deliver on ROE they…
  • Lower Costs
  • Increase Access
  • Improve Outcomes
  • Leverage to Learning Leader
…and they do it at scale

Our Portfolio at a Glance

82
Companies
450M+
Learners Served
$$
Capital Raised
27%
of invested Capital
into Female Founded
Companies
57%
of Invested Capital
into POC Founded
Companies
190
Countries Represented

Portfolio Company Highlights

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Class Dojo
Free communication platform connecting
teachers, students and parents to build positive
classroom communities and support social
emotional learning.
Founders
Sam Chaudhary
Liam Don
Scale:
50M+ Students and Parents
190+ Countries Served
Founded:
2011, San Francisco, CA, USA
Most Recent Financing:
$125M Series D (2021)
GSV Entry Round:
Series B (2015)
GSV Funds:
Fund I
Roe
Lowers Cost
  • Freemium model
  • Always free for teachers and schools
Increase Access
  • ClassDojo's network reaches over 50M students and parents
  • Used with 95% of U.S. schools
Leverage to Learning Leader
  • Empowers educators to easily communicate with families and manage their classrooms in one place
  • #1 easiest-to-use and most-trustworthy communication platform according to teachers (Source: YouGov)
Improve Outcomes
  • Career Benefits: 87% of those using Coursera for professional learning report a benefit to their career
  • Professional Certificates: Over 15 entry-level professional certificates offered on Coursera
  • Increased Productivity and Retention: Companies note a 25% increase in productivity and 38% reduction in employee attrition (Source: IPC, 2020)
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Clever
Single sign-on platform for K-12, simplifying interoperability and access to digital learning by bringing schools, teachers, students and education application developers together in one secure platform.
Founders
Tyler Bosmeny
Dan Carroll
Rafael Garcia
Scale:
60% of U.S. schools use Clever 95,000 schools use Clever
Founded:
2012, San Francisco, CA, USA
Most Recent Financing:
Acquired by Kahoot! (2021)
GSV Entry Round:
Seed (2012)
GSV Funds:
Fund I
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Lowers Cost
  • Free for districts and schools thanks to a network of 850+ technology/app partners
Leverage to Learning Leader
  • Clever removes complexity and minimizes information silos across applications as teachers increasingly bring technology into their classrooms
Increase Access
  • Used in over 60% of schools in the U.S, including 95+ of top 100 school districts across the U.S.
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Coursera
Global online learning platform for over 100M learners. Partners with leading university and industry partners to offer online courses, certifications, and degrees.
Founders
Daphne Koller
Andrew Ng
Scale:
113M+ Registered Users 190+ Countries Served
Founded:
2012, Mountain View, CA, USA
Most Recent Financing:
Public, IPO in March 2021
GSV Entry Round:
Series D (2017)
GSV Funds:
Fund I
Lowers Cost
  • Learners can complete a full degree on Coursera platform for as low as $9K
  • Over 7k courses from 275+ leading universities and companies available for free or via affordable subscriptions
Increase Access
  • Programs are available on-demand and on any web-enabled device
  • 50% of new registered learners on Coursera are female, and over 55% are from Emerging Markets
Improve Outcomes
  • Career Benefits: 87% of those using Coursera for professional learning report a benefit to their career
  • Professional Certificates: Over 15 entry-level professional certificates offered on Coursera
  • Increased Productivity and Retention: Companies note a 25% increase in productivity and 38% reduction in employee attrition (Source: IPC, 2020)
Leverage to Learning Leader
  • Educator partners use platform to reach millions of learners and
    institutions across 190+ countries with their content
Roe
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ROE
Learneo
Platform of productivity and learning businesses, including Course Hero, CliffsNotes, LitCharts, QuillBot, Scribbr, and Symbolab
Founders
Andrew Grauer
Gregor Carrigan
Scale:
3M Subscribers
103M Total Study Resources
Founded:
2006, Redwood City, CA, USA
Most Recent Financing:
$380M Series C (2021)
GSV Entry Round:
Series A (2014)
GSV Funds:
Fund I & II
Increase Access
  • 24/7 study help available
Lowers Cost
  • Freemium model
Leverage to Learning Leader
  • Learno has an advantageous positive feedback loop through user-generated content
Improve Outcomes
  • Student Outcomes: Enables a better way for students and educators to make achieving better outcomes, products such as QuillBot provide improves users writing skills.
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Degreed
Learning Experience Platform used by companies to upskill and reskill their workforce.
Founders
David Blake
Eric Sharp
Scale:
6.5M+  Active Users1 in 3 Fortune 50 companies use Degreed
Founded:
2012, Pleasanton, CA, USA
Most Recent Financing:
$153M Series D (2021)
GSV Entry Round:
Seed (2013)
GSV Funds:
Fund I
Lowers Cost
  • ~$12 per user for a solution that integrates with 1,300+ tech partner solutions
Leverage to Learning Leader
  • Employees use Degreed to “own” their upward mobility through learning experiences personalized to their expertise, interests, and the demands of their employer
Roe
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Most Recent Financing:
Series A (2022)
GSV Entry Round:
Series A (2022)
GSV Funds:
Fund III
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Increase Access
  • DSL’s VR and content produce astonishing results for learners from under-represented backgrounds
  • In a recent RCT, BIPOC men who were on Pell Grants scored 95% on Lab Assignments in DSL group vs. 76% in the non-DSL group
Improve Outcomes
  • Increased Scores: Leveraging VR and the power of narratives, DSL enables students to be 2x more engaged in their coursework and earn scores, on average, a full letter grade higher.
  • Increased Scores: Leveraging VR and the power of narratives, DSL enables students to be 2x more engaged in their coursework and earn scores, on average, a full letter grade higher.
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Roe
Founders
Rachel Romer
Brittany Stich
Scale:
50K+ Active Learners
200+ Partner Institutions
Founded:
2015, Denver, CO, USA
Most Recent Financing:
$175M Series F (2022)
GSV Entry Round:
Series D-1 (2020)
GSV Funds:
Fund II
Lowers Cost
  • For Guild employer partners, degrees and other
    learning available to eligible employees at low
    or often no-cost
Leverage to Learning Leader
  • 200+ partner institutions connect to learners through Guild
Increase Access
  • Over 4M+ frontline workers have access to education benefits on the Guild platform through their employer
  • 51% of employees that enroll in education programs though Guild are people of color and 36% are 1st Generation
Improve Outcomes
  • Employee Security: Employees that participate in learning through the Guild platform are 2.7x more likely to be retained at their employer.
  • Employee Advancement: Employees that participate in learning through the Guild platform are 7.5x more likely to move into a management role.
  • Credentials Earned: Tens of thousands of credentials have been earned to date.
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LEAD School
Full stack school transformation platform, inclusive of assessments, education and remediation for affordable private schools in India.
Founders
Sumeet Mehta
Smita Deorah
Scale:
1.2M Students
2.6K Schools
Founded:
2013, Mumbai, India
Most Recent Financing:
$100M Series E (2022)
GSV Entry Round:
Series D (2021)
GSV Funds:
Fund II
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Increase Access
  • LEAD powers 2.6k schools and 1.2M students within those schools, providing them with a quality education that would be otherwise inaccessible in their areas
Improve Outcomes
  • Guaranteed Mastery: LEAD enters schools where students are struggling and guarantees to bring at least 70% of them to academic mastery.
  • Prior to the pandemic, LEAD had a track record of entering schools and delivering 20%+ improvement, bringing 80%+ students to mastery.
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Founders
Damir Sabol
Sasa Skevin
Scale:
30M MAU
7B Problems Solved Annually
‍200M+ Downloads to Date
Founded:
2014, Zagreb, Croatia
Most Recent Financing:
$23M Series B (2021)
GSV Entry Round:
Series A-1 (2020)
GSV Funds:
Fund II
Leverage to Learning Leader
  • Over 1M teacher uses
Lowers Cost
  • Core step-by-step math solver functionality is free
Increase Access
  • Anyone with a smartphone has access to an AI-powered virtual tutor
Improve Outcomes
  • Problems Solved Annually: 7B problems solved annually; students receive help instantaneously and eliminates the hustle of scheduling and meeting a tutor.
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PhysicsWallah
Alakh Pandey
Prateek Maheshwari
Scale:
10M YouTube Subscribers
5.8M MAU
Founded:
2014, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India
Most Recent Financing:
$100M Series A (2022)
GSV Entry Round:
Series A (2022)
GSV Funds:
Fund III
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Lowers Cost
  • PW began as a YouTube driven engineering and medical
    test prep provider for Northern India. The team is leveraging
    the platform and its reach to expand into other exams,
    hybrid learning, skilling, K10 and more in order
    to truly transform access to quality education.
Leverage to Learning Leader
  • ~90% of available content is free
  • Paid courses are ~10% the cost of competitive offerings
Increase Access
  • 80% of students are in families that make less than $700 / month
  • 75% of PW students’ families have only one earning member.
  • 77% of PW students do not have WiFi access; instead they access the platform using mobile data
  • 85% of PW students do not use any other e- learning product
Improve Outcomes
  • Retention & Rating: PW has 50% retention and a 4.7/5.0 rating on the Google Play store
  • School Admissions: Last year 1 in 5 students selected in government colleges was a PW student
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Tutored By Teachers
Free communication platform connecting
teachers, students and parents to build positive
classroom communities and support social
emotional learning.
Founders
Shaan Akbar
Rahul
Kalita
Scale:
7.7K Students Served
82K Hours of Instruction
Founded:
2020, New York, USA
Most Recent Financing:
Series A (2021)
GSV Entry Round:
Series A (2021)
GSV Funds:
Fund III
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Increase Access
  • TbT provides personalized, small group instruction to all students, regardless of income level
Improve Outcomes
  • TbT strives to continue to demonstrate double-digit gains across math and ELA (10-30%) against target standards.
Leverage to Learning Leader
  • TbT provides fair compensation to teacher-tutors, and supports teachers overwhelmed in the classroom
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Valenture Institute
Partnering with the world’s leading education institutions to offer aspirational online learning experiences, including a high quality, affordable online High School experience
Founders
Robert Paddock
Scale:
5K+ Students
Founded:
2019, Cape Town, South Africa
Most Recent Financing:
Series A-1 (2022)
GSV Entry Round:
Series A (2020)
GSV Funds:
Fund II
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Lowers Cost
  • Affordable online school
Increase Access
  • 42% of students come from low income families
  • Online offering allows Valenture to reach kids in underserved areas
  • 87% of students are non-white
Improve Outcomes
  • Personalized Learning: Allows for more personalized learning and pacing for students, 1on1 support when the child needs it the most.
Leverage to Learning Leader
  • Provides an online platform for South Africa's best teachers and counselors to reach high school students around the country
  • Valenture Institute uses tech to help alleviate a lot of the burden of teachers and help them focus on teaching
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