Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of April 5, 2021. Coursera went IPO

The need for technological change in education has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the United Nations, 1.6 billion students in 190 countries, approximately 94% of all students in the world, saw their schools temporarily closed due to the pandemic.

This forced many teachers to teach online and students of all ages to learn online. The lessons learned during this period of “forced experimentation” have the potential to enable an permanent digital transformation for education. In 2020, 130 edtech startups raised over $2.2 billion in funding and this past week Coursera, one of the most iconic edtech startups in the US went IPO. 

Here is a quick summary of the Coursera S-1 filing:

• Coursera is valued at ~ $5.9B
• Revenue: $293M in 2020, and $184M in 2019
• User base: 77M registered users in 2020, and 46.8M users in 2019. 65% YoY growth
• Investors: New Enterprise Associates, KPCB, Learn Capital, G Squared, IFC Venture Capital
• Corporate headquarters office location - “Address Not Applicable”

It will be super interesting to watch what other edtech unicorns will go public or exit in the coming months.  Here is the complete list of edtech unicorns as of April 2021:

• 🇨🇳Yuanfudao - $15.5B
• 🇮🇳 BYJU's - $13B
• 🇨🇳VIPKid - $4.5B
• 🇺🇸Udemy - $3.2B
• 🇨🇳Zuoyebang - $3B
• 🇮🇳Unacademy - $2B
• 🇨🇳Zhangmen - $1.6B
• 🇨🇳Changingedu - $1.5B
• 🇨🇦 ApplyBoard -$1.5B
• 🇨🇳 Luoji Siwei - $1.18B
• 🇺🇸Course Hero - $1.1B
• 🇨🇳 HuJiang - $1B
• 🇨🇳 iTutorGroup - $1B
• 🇺🇸 Age of Learning - $1B
• 🇨🇳Huike Group - $1B
• 🇨🇳KnowBox - $1B
• 🇺🇸 Quizlet - $1B
• 🇨🇳Yunxuetang - $1B

P.S. I am hosting a FoundersHK Clubhouse talk with Chris McCann, my partner at Race Capital on Monday 6 pm PST on the topic of Fintech and Crypto investing.  Join us!

This week a total of 22 startups raised $1.0218B in funding, 1 IPO:

• $444.5M goes to 8 Enterprise startups
• $22.5M goes to 2 HR startups
• $25M goes to 2 FinTech startups
• $65M goes to 1 Media startup
• $10M goes to 1 E-Commerce startup
• $100M goes to 1 Gaming startup
• $8.5M goes to 1 IoT startup
• $24.3M goes to 1 Transportation startup
• $149M goes to 3 Healthcare startups
• $173M goes to 2 BioTech startups