Recent edtech news is Curriculum Associates acquisition of Australia’s Stile Education for an undisclosed sum.
Stile is a great business with three amazing founders (Byron Scaf, Daniel Pikler and Dr Alan Finkel) as well as having a committed investor AquaAsia Growth Equity .
So what does it say, if anything, about the world of edtech?.
My view is that while many sectors of edtech are over-served (maths being the most obvious example), it’s far less so when it comes to high quality science products and services. For startups this is all about the cost of producing great content as well as linking into curricula and assessments. This made me think of the similarities between Stiles and TWIG Science (now part of Imagine Learning). Founded by Anthony Bouchier (founder at ITZA Media) and Catherine Cahn (now a partner at Tucker Capital) it was built using components of third party content from organisations like Getty and the BBC, before shifting to developing its own content, initially in Glasgow and London and then the US.
TWIG’s first major external investors were DC Thomson, Scottish Enterprise and EpsilonPartners LLP, followed by Imperial College (Series B £3.6m in 2016). Eventually TWIG was acquired by Weld North Education in 2021 (now Imagine Learning), who were founded in 2010 as a partnership between Jonathan Grayer, ex Chair & CEO of Kaplan and the VC firm KKR . Imagine Learning’s main backers are Silverlake and Onex (who acquired TES Global from Providence Equity Partners in early 2022).
TWIG built a stellar team from day one both in terms of their academic advisors and staff. The company’s initial focus was on building revenue via licensing, doing deals all across every key market from Europe to China and the US. This was a smart tactic that gave them room to develop their own content and brand. Their big international breakthrough was in 2018 when TWIG Science was adopted by the California State Board of Education for their K-6 Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) programme. TWIG were one of only three companies (along with Amplify Science and McGraw Hill’s Inspire Science) approved for the initial US$300m(£225m)/3 year programme, of which TWIG is estimated to have won 30%. A key part of this success was TWIG’s work with SCALE (Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity).
So why did two of the best edtech companies I’ve ever looked at end up in the US?
The answer is scale, access to capital and, oddly, the impact of standards. Big deals like California and Nevada (2021) matter as they send a very clear signal to both the market and investors. But NGSS was also a key driver: developed in collaboration by 26 US states, the US National Research Council, National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this set a clear mandate for educational publishers and edtech companies. From what I can find out, it seems the NGSS was also a key factor in how STILE have built their US presence.
Combining acquisitive (buy and build) companies who are backed by significant financial capacity (often VC- backed), with high quality content that is built around a standard like NGSS seems to be the winning exit recipe in science edtech. But that’s not the entire story. Many years ago, a close friend who led a major international sports team said to me, “edtech sounds a lot like elite sport. There’s plenty of money and talented people and yet most fail. In sport the difference between elite teams in terms of money and talent is quite small. What sets successful teams aside is their culture. I bet every investment pitch you’ve read has endless numbers and all sorts of bullshit strategy, but I’d bet none mention culture. Culture eats strategy every day. That’s why they fail!”
And he was right. What has made TWIG and STILE succeed is a combination of talent, strategy, and finance but most importantly culture. I can think of several people I met at TWIG who stayed for over 10 years and I’d bet STILE would be the same. I met Byron and Daniel soon after they began their edtech journey and I was impressed then and while I haven’t seen or spoken to them for several years I’m sure their ideas and ethos are still the same.
Success in edtech science is pretty simple – first find some experienced founders aged over 35, add to them a raft of talented people, add in supportive investors, build high-quality standards/pedagogically based content and top it off with a strong culture. Mix all of these up and you probably have a 1 in 5 chance of success. When I was even more ignorant I’d have finished this with Q.E.D which, when I was at school, was known when trying to prove something in maths as Quite Easily Done. Now that I’m marginally less ignorant I’d again say that the success of both these companies is a good example of edtech Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum/) in plain English which was to be demonstrated).
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