• Coursera

  Participated · Series D · Jun 2017

  Coursera operates a large online learning marketplace offering courses to individual learners and a separate enterprise arm that delivers training to companies. The company launched the Coursera Campus Response Initiative, which signed up over 1 million students, and said enrollments quintupled year over year during the pandemic. Its enterprise business serves more than 2,500 companies and grew 70% year-over-year. Coursera plans to expand internationally and hire more employees. Starting this fall the company will charge roughly $250–$400 per student subscription for certain offerings. The pandemic has been a key growth driver for the platform and its recent operational metrics reflect sustained demand for remote learning. Coursera operates an online learning platform that offers free and paid short courses, skills certifications and full degrees in partnership with universities and businesses. The company hosts about 3,200 courses and 310 specializations with partners including Columbia University, Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan. Some 40 million people have taken classes on Coursera, and the company has moved into corporate training and vocational programs such as a Google IT certification and a health vertical introduced in January. CEO Jeff Maggioncalda, who joined in 2017, says Coursera intends to expand its product portfolio across open courses, microcredentials, bachelor’s and master’s degrees and other offerings. The company is using recent growth to explore next steps such as helping paying learners with job placement and deeper partnerships with employers. Financially, Coursera’s valuation has risen from around $800 million to “well over” $1 billion per sources cited in the article. Coursera is an online learning platform that hosts 2,000 courses, 180 specializations and full master’s degree programs in areas such as business and computing. The company reports 26 million registered users and works with 150 university partners and around 50 companies that offer courses through the platform. Its offerings span short courses, specializations and newer full online degrees, with the majority of users currently in short-course programs while masters programs are in early cohorts. Coursera also serves enterprise and nonprofit customers across multiple countries, and lists corporate customers including BCG, BNY Mellon, L’Oreal, PayPal and Air France KLM. Management says it will use new funding to develop AI to personalize learning, expand its range of full online degrees, and grow its enterprise and nonprofit training business. The company was founded in 2012 and has raised capital previously, bringing total funding to just over $210 million after this round. Coursera, co-founded in 2012 and based in Mountain View, CA, offers a platform for open-access courses from universities and educational organizations. The company provides more than 15 million registered learners access to over 1,400 courses and 80 Specializations from 130+ institutions. Coursera’s core product is its online learning platform that aggregates university course content and Specializations. The company raised $11.6M in the second close of its Series C financing, bringing total Series C funding to $61.1M after a $49.5M first tranche announced in August 2015. The second close investment was made by EDBI, the corporate investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board. Coursera will use the funding to expand efforts to source new, career-relevant content and improve the learning experience to meet the needs of learners in Asia, one of its fastest-growing markets. Coursera operates an online education platform that offers 1,100 courses to nearly 15 million users. The company serves large international audiences—about 1 million users each in China and India, with Brazil and Latin America also sizable—and the majority of its staff (98 percent) is based in Silicon Valley. Coursera's primary revenue source is its multi-course paid specializations program, and it is testing alternative monetization strategies. The company plans to use new funding to fuel international expansion, expand its content offerings, and continue product innovation. Management has highlighted priorities such as improving assessments and learner interactions and launching additional specializations with industry partners.

• TrueCar

  Participated · Equity · Sep 2011

  TrueCar is a negotiation-free car-buying platform led by founder and CEO Scott Painter that provides buyers insight into what others actually paid, upfront pricing information, a guaranteed savings certificate and connections to certified dealers. The service connects consumers with a national network of nearly 7,000 certified dealers and supplies negotiation-free pricing for large membership and service organizations including AARP, American Express, AAA, USAA and Consumer Reports. The company says it will use the newly raised funds for market expansion, product development and to further build the TrueCar brand. TrueCar maintains offices in Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Austin. The platform’s core value proposition is transparent, simplified car purchasing via dealer partnerships that remove negotiation from the process. The article references prior financings but does not provide other operating financial metrics. TrueCar publishes real-time vehicle transaction data for both new and used cars in the U.S. and operates auto-buying programs with partners such as Farm Bureau, American Express and US Bank. The company says it has helped users buy over 350,000 cars since inception, including 20,000 in a single month (last August). TrueCar has been self-reportedly profitable since 2009. To fuel growth and pursue acquisitions, TrueCar secured more than $200 million in combined debt and equity financing. It recently acquired Automotive Lease Guide from DealerTrack, bought Honk.com from News Corporation, and is acquiring CarPerks. The company was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, with offices in San Francisco, and a Reuters source says an IPO is planned for the first half of 2012. TrueCar operates a new-car pricing research site that publishes up-to-date and comprehensive new car price reports derived from real local sales transactions. The company was founded by Scott Painter, the founder of CarsDirect and Zag. TrueCar is based in Santa Monica, California. The business secured $35.5M in financing to support its growth. The financing package includes a $21.5M credit facility and additional commitments from institutional investors. TrueCar intends to use the cash to grow organically and through acquisition.

No current team members are available.