Glimpse: Why We Invested

At Impact Engine, one of our four impact areas of focus is education. Time and time again, we have heard from companies that the best edtech products have to fight against mediocre ones because of the relationship-based nature of sales in many school districts. The reality underlying that frustration is that administrators haven’t had great tools to foster informed decision making. Traditional achievement systems simply present outcomes without capturing the data in the context of what educators or programs did and how effective their actions were at impacting student outcomes. At the same time, traditional financial systems have lacked the correlations between expenditures and student achievement. As a result, districts have struggled to align their spending on products and programs that produce the best student outcomes.

Solution

Our most recent investment in Glimpse seeks to address that challenge. Glimpse has developed a data platform that connects budgeting systems with data on student outcomes, enabling districts and schools to calculate an eROI, or education return on investment. What drew us to this investment was the potential for systems change within education. By providing data to districts, Glimpse enables decision makers to include impact in their purchase decisions, and it also helps them ask the right questions when they see discrepancies in performance within or across schools. The US spent $12 billion on edtech alone in 2017, and that figure is substantially higher when you consider spending on programs and curriculum. We believe Glimpse has the potential to meaningfully impact how those dollars are spent.

Why We Invested

In addition to the compelling market opportunity and potential for impact, we were impressed by the team. The company is led by co-founders Nicole Pezant and Adam Pearson, both experienced edtech entrepreneurs who previously worked together at Chalkable. They’ve demonstrated an ability to grow and scale (and exit) companies in this space, and we are excited to work with them. Despite a small team size, the company had already achieved meaningful traction by the time we invested.

Impact

While Glimpse is able to infer correlations, they are not utilizing randomized control trials (RCTs) and do not purport to evaluate causality. However, they do provide a more granular level of detail that helps administrators connect the dots between spending and outcomes. To that end, the impact metrics that we are tracking for the company include the spending efficiency or eROI (the % of spend that is driving student gains); the number of districts using Glimpse, including a breakdown of Title 1 schools and the number of students within each district; and improvements in student performance.

Our Investment

We invested in the seed round that Glimpse raised earlier this summer which will enable the company to invest in product, grow sales, and demonstrate improvement in spending efficiency at customers. We look forward to supporting the company alongside co-investors Fresco Capital, Govtech Fund and GSV AcceleraTE.

Fixer: Why We Invested

The United States is currently faced with an alarming labor shortage of skilled workers in the trades. Over 60% of skilled tradesmen are over the age of 44, and the industry will struggle to fill these roles as younger generations continue to seek employment in other industries. 78% of firms report having difficulty finding qualified workers to fill these types of positions. The construction industry lost 1.5 million workers during the Great Recession. As a result, skilled trade jobs have consistently ranked as the most difficult position to fill since 2010, with 62% of companies struggling to fill these positions.

Solution

Fixer offers a compelling, scalable solution to address this labor gap by providing a career entry point and development for women and minorities while also delivering a superior customer experience. Their on-demand home repair service features transparent pricing as well as convenient online booking and payment. The company identifies overlooked talent and develops their skills with progressive training in customer service, home repair, and maintenance. “Fixers” (the employees of Fixer who provide handyperson services) have access to a variety of learning opportunities, ranging from informal sessions with fellow workers, to online courses and classroom-based certification training provided by the company. The curriculum also includes work in the field with mentors in order to gain hands-on experience. Ultimately, customers benefit from Fixer’s intensive training program in the form of impeccable service and high quality of work.

Why We Invested

Fixer boasts an extremely strong management team. The company was founded by Mike Evans (co-founder and former COO of GrubHub) and a handful of ex-GrubHub product, operations, engineering and marketing veterans who have a proven track record of success. Also, Fixer is seizing a large, attractive market opportunity by vying to become a nationwide, customer-service oriented brand for home maintenance and repair. In addition to their impressive management team and the large market opportunity, we are also excited about the potential for impact at scale. Since there is a limited supply of experienced tradesmen, Fixer’s focus on recruiting underrepresented populations to join the trades as novice fixers becomes a clear competitive advantage for the company.

Impact

Fixer’s goal is to bring more people into the trades, giving them measurable and valuable skills, which will provide them greater economic security and mobility, particularly for those currently earning less than $50,000 per year, as well as for underrepresented populations such as women and minorities. Typically, we invest in products where the customer is “buying the impact” (e.g. a school administrator wants better education outcomes), so that the impact is directly driven by sales. In Fixer’s case, the customer is buying a convenient service, but because there is a shortage of skilled handy-people, the social impact is a key requirement for Fixer to grow its business (i.e. they must successfully train people to provide a great service).

One of the biggest variables on impact will be who those employees are and whether the company is hiring the underserved. The leadership team at Fixer has a strong commitment to impact, and to reflect that commitment, the company registered as a public benefit corporation. As the training gets underway, we plan to track the number and type of new practical skills acquired by Fixers, as well as the demographics of those entering or re-entering the trades.

Our Investment

We invested in the seed round that Fixer raised in May, which will allow them to continue to grow the business, to refine their model, to build out the curriculum for their training academy, and to hire their first group of novice fixers. We look forward to working with Mike and the rest of the Fixer team as they continue to grow the business alongside co-investors Founder Collective and Hyde Park Venture Partners.