Participated · Seed · Jan 2020

Adjacent Academies provides immersive, credit-bearing courses that help liberal arts graduates build technical competencies and professional networks to thrive amid technological transformation. Launched in 2019 under the leadership of Anh Nguyen, the program focuses on in-demand skills such as JavaScript while actively integrating soft skills like communication, teamwork, and ethics into its curriculum. Students enroll in immersive courses that combine technical training with opportunities to refine values-driven design thinking. The company leverages a Silicon Valley presence to incorporate regular visits to startups and established tech firms across industries. In its first year, students visited companies including Slack, LinkedIn, and Remind. Adjacent Academies closed a $2.1M seed round to support its programs and growth.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2019

Riipen develops a platform that enables postsecondary students to connect with real-world projects from companies, embedding collaborations directly into coursework. Led by founder and CEO Dana Stephenson, the Toronto-based company helps employers collaborate with students on research, talent pipelines, and brand-building. The platform is used by employers ranging from IBM to the YMCA of South Hampton Roads. Riipen serves more than 5,000 employers and 40,000 students at 150 colleges and universities globally. The company raised $3.75M in funding and intends to use the proceeds to continue expanding operations. Backers included Reach Capital, Strada Education Network, SEI Ventures, EduLab Capital Partners, Entangled Group, Atrium and ASU ScaleU.

Participated · Series B · Apr 2019

Labster builds fully interactive virtual laboratory simulations used in high schools and universities to enhance science learning. Its platform combines game-development techniques with learning psychology to offer life-like lab experiences that can replace or supplement in-person labs. Labster supports over 3,000 universities and high schools, tens of thousands of courses, and millions of students every year; over 5 million students have used the platform. The company employs 350-plus people from over 30 countries and delivers simulations across 70-plus countries. Labster is expanding its simulation library and broadening offerings to younger students and adult workforce skills training, aiming to reach 100 million students through institutional and government partnerships. It positions its product for hybrid, remote, and in-person learning modalities and reports improvements in student engagement and reduced failure rates. Labster provides immersive virtual science laboratory simulations to colleges, universities and high schools via institution-level subscriptions, with features such as 3D animations, replays, quiz questions and a virtual learning assistant. The company positions itself as a platform for immersive learning rather than a content company and is building tooling (Labster Portal) for teachers to track student usage and embed lessons. Labster has paused large-scale VR headset efforts to prioritize solutions that work on hardware institutions already have. The startup reports more than 2,000 colleges, universities and high schools on its platform and has signed deals including the entire California Community College network (over 2.1 million students) and a country-wide agreement in Denmark. Management says the new capital will be used to increase staff, expand into regions including Latin America and Africa, and invest in product development to better support teachers. Labster has set goals to serve 100 million students in the coming years and to enable users to customize and build their own simulations on its platform. Labster builds virtual-reality and simulated laboratory experiences for STEM students, sold to institutions via subscription tiers that control access levels. Its simulations include 3D animations, replays, quiz questions and a virtual learning assistant to supplement in-person courses. Usage of Labster’s VR product increased 15X since March, and the company added 2.1 million students through a deal with all of California’s community colleges. The majority of customers are private institutions, and growth has been driven by larger annual license deals and partnerships. Labster plans to use new capital to expand in Asia and to bolster its mobile offering for high-mobile markets. Since being founded in 2012, the company has raised $40 million to date and its valuation is reported above $100 million. Labster, launched in 2013 and headquartered in Denmark, provides fully interactive virtual laboratory simulations powered by VR for students in biology, chemistry, physics, engineering and general sciences. The company offers about 70 virtual labs designed to increase participation in STEM curricula and improve learning outcomes and retention. Labster’s simulations aim to give students access to experiments they might not otherwise have due to cost or limited lab time, and the product is sold as a subscription with institution and individual student account models. By 2018 more than 150 universities and high schools had adopted Labster, a quadrupling of annual growth that put the software in the hands of over 200,000 students worldwide; customers include Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Exeter and ETH Zurich, and partners include Google, Arizona State University, Lenovo, Pearson and Springer. The company will use new funding to expand its STEM content catalog, develop additional lab simulations, and continue scaling U.S. operations including customer support and sales. Labster builds interactive 3D simulations of laboratory experiments and equipment designed for life‑science teaching, delivered via a platform built on the Unity game engine. The company has created around 65 simulations and supports both B2B sales to universities and B2C access for individual students. Labster aims to replace traditional textbooks up to graduate level with immersive, reusable simulations and has worked with institutions such as MIT and Imperial College. The platform is cross‑platform (desktop/tablet with VR/AR support planned) and includes a “lab builder” tool to let educators and students create content. Currently around 150 institutions use Labster, with primary markets in the UK and the US and additional users in Asia and South America. With the new funding the company plans to expand simulation content across more science topics, accelerate product development, and grow sales, marketing and headcount.