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Avalanche VC: August 2022 Update
Alternative Education, PennGSE Event, GitPOAP and Zest Capital Raise
Welcome to the inaugural Avalanche Ecosystem newsletter.
We hope to use this newsletter to keep in touch with our community of investors, founders, and friends.
-Katelyn, Dalglish, & Eric
News from the portfolio
GitPOAP announced their $4M round. Read about their vision to memorialize professional contributions and accomplishments as blockchain-based badges here.
Distributed Finance (FKA Kontinous) announced their seed round led by Borderless Capital. We invested last year in their pre-seed. Distributed Finance will now become the holding company for Zest Capital, a DAO management tool within Algorand and Rand Gallery, an Algorand NFT marketplace that Distributed recently acquired. Here is the write up in The Block.
Prisms of Reality launched their Middle School Math modules. CEO Anurupa Ganguly was featured in Forbes: EdTech Entrepreneur Creating Her Own Reality.
Tribute refreshed its product and is participating in Engage’s GTM Accelerator.
Upright Education has signed more college partnerships including Mercy College (here) and Clinton Community College (here)
Continuum received a nice write-up on their learn-to-earn model by WTFCrypto
Whalesync is giving an online workshop on how to instantly 2-way sync data between Airtable, Webflow, & Notion. Sign up here.
Chainstarters is partnering with Alchemy to Take Web3 Mainstream. Read about it here.
The Social Institute launched a big product update. They will be in 145 new schools and cover 36 states this fall - and they aren’t done growing yet!
The new DIVERSE Trials Act gives Acclinate a boost! Del Smith, CEO and co-founder, shares how Acclianate increases diversity in clinical trials on this podcast.
AVC team out and around
Katelyn & Dalglish caught up with Brek Goin, CEO of Hammr last month. Hammr is building an online professional community dedicated to construction trades. Brek is a co-host of Bred to Build, a podcast that shares real industry insights to help people learn the ropes, avoid mistakes, and gain new knowledge to navigate a career in construction.
Eric rocked LA Tech week. Below is Eric (in peach) at the Arkive (decentralized museum) event meeting with arts, culture and crypto innovators and entrepreneurs
Our Online Writing
Obviously The Future
We had a busy month writing and publishing a few blog posts through our Obviously The Future newsletter.
Bamboo Ceilings
Dalglish has published a series of blogs for his coaching practice including two widely circulated publications giving advice to East Asians on how to break through the “Bamboo Ceiling.” Read Part one and Part two.
Eric Scott Says
Eric wrote about three thoughts this week here. He explores the implications of GPT-3 and discusses his recent angel investment in Verci, which is attacking the `Access to Opportunities` and `Personal Transformation` for would-be college consumers.
Article in Business Insider here. Katelyn highlighted Prisms of Reality. Our friend Brian Dixon from Kapor Capital picked Guardian’s Collective.
Coming up in September:
Katelyn will be giving the keynote for Penn’s Graduate School of Education.
Here is the registration link.
What we’ve been reading:
Learn:
Why the Learning Styles myth spreads. Here.
Literacy is a trillion-dollar opportunity. A Gallup study shows that low levels of adult literacy could be costing the U.S. as much as $2.2 trillion a year. Here.
Investing in innovation. Podcast episode of Better Careers, Better Lives, with one of our favorite investors, Laura McCoolidge. Here.
Earn:
Why the career of the future needs a portfolio approach. Here.
De-bossification. Here.
State of the Global Workplace. Report from Gallup. Here.
Own:
Shared company ownership may be the missing path to the American dream. Here.
America’s $7 Trillion Retirement Crisis Is Only Getting Worse. Here.
Venture Capital/Investing:
In Venture, the dollars returned matter, not the MOIC (Multiple on Invested Capital). Twitter thread here.
VC Termsheet Quiz from Pitchbook. Here.
When are you Pitch-Ready? Consumer Social metrics here.
Thank you for reading. See you next month!