Adams Street’s Growth Equity Team is proud to announce an investment in ClassDojo, a social network connecting teachers with students and parents to build amazing classroom communities through a suite of digital tools.
The education vertical is one of the largest and most underserved markets in the world. It is the second largest industry in the US (after healthcare) and represents between 3-7% of global GDP spend. Yet, despite the trillions of dollars spent on education in the US, satisfaction and outcomes have largely been flat since the 1960s, and today over half of US families are dissatisfied with their child’s educational experience. As a result, “love” isn’t necessarily the first word that comes to mind when people think of their child’s education. With a Net Promoter Score of 81 (which is worlds apart from the NPS of legacy education companies and much closer to the scores of iconic consumer brands like Starbucks and Disney) and more than 1.3 million 5-star reviews in Apple’s App Store, ClassDojo is building the world’s most loved consumer brand in education.
ClassDojo has quickly built an enormous network of teachers, students, and parents. Today, the company has a presence in over 95% of US K-8 schools. Roughly 1 in 5 US families with a child in primary school and nearly half of all K-8 teachers use ClassDojo! Furthermore, the company serves hundreds of thousands of schools in over 180 countries around the world – making it one of the world’s most widely-used education products.
While its scale is impressive, what is perhaps more impressive is that the company’s growth has been 100% organic, coming from word-of-mouth referrals because users love the product. As evidence of this, ClassDojo has best-in-class engagement on both the teacher and parent sides of the network, placing its engagement on par with the likes of Netflix, Twitter, Spotify, and YouTube.
Historically, most companies have tried to improve the education system from the top-down through a classic enterprise selling motion. The challenge with this strategy is that these companies sell to the school district or government: a traditionally arduous and complicated process. Before starting ClassDojo, co-founders Sam Chaudhary and Liam Don realized that education is not a product, but an experience that is created every day by the people doing the work: the teachers, the students, and the parents. To improve that experience, Sam and Liam recognized they needed to go bottom-up and place the most important part of the education system – those doing the work – at the center of their strategy.
Adams Street could not be more excited to partner with the ClassDojo team as they continue on their mission to provide every child with an education they love!
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