SRQ Magazine catches up with Rita Ferrandino on her thoughts about edtech: Education Spotlight BY JACOB OGLES | SRQ DAILY MONDAY BUSINESS EDITION Innovations in the world of education mean growth opportunity for investors. While working in the traditional textbook industry, Rita Ferrandino saw opportunity for new resources and co-founded ARC Capital Development in 2003. Since […]
Author Archives: Kevin Custer
With the last quarter of 2015 already here, it’s time to turn thoughts toward 2016 and how to best control your sales process. Going into the new year, you need to ensure you have a solid pipeline of qualified leads. If you’re selling a product or service for more than $5000, it’s very likely that […]
U.S. edtech companies raised $350 million in Q3 2015, up 9% from Q3 2014. General Assembly’s $70 million led all deals for Q3, followed by Civitas Learning’s $60 million Series D. In August alone, U.S. education technology companies scored $91 million in venture capital, led by Coursera’s $49.5 million Series C round (which will likely […]
What a busy, nonstop autumn here at Arc Capital Development! We engaged with four new companies. Welcome to Quantum Learning Network, Prometric, Kickboard, and Integrated Tracking. Each is a market leader in its category. They are all passionate for success and led by great executive teams. Advisory Services Prometric Prometric is a wholly-owned subsidiary of […]
Typically, you can have a fair amount of success in charging, (to simplify things), $1 a year for 5 years if you know they have $5 from the beginning. With stimulus funding, however, that $5 will not last. Though an initial thought might be to ask for the $5 upfront and hope you can get […]
This week, I talked to five CEOs. I met another dozen at the GSV Investor Day. Everyone is juggling 10,001 summertime Must-Dos. It looks like chaos. But it’s not. domain name test These priorities are the same for everyone, and somewhere on that priority whiteboard is “Marketing.” Based on company lifecycle, it’s either at the […]
Over the last 24 months, it was hard to find an aspiring entrepreneur who did not start their pitch with “free to teacher” model. Unfortunately, it is also hard to find a company for which this model actually worked. We can point to hundreds of casualties: entrepreneurs who used their scarce resources to build free […]
I recently spoke at a congressional briefing on technology in early education, focusing on the overall economic benefits of investing in technology for preK education and special needs. The panel also included Rhian Evans Allvin, Executive Director for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC); Benjamin Heuston, Ph.D., President, Waterford Institute; Chip […]
When you are assessing the overall health of your company, the sales pipeline is a critical place to start. When Arc looks at a sales pipeline, we measure two things. We look at each deal and where it is in relationship to the ability to close the deal – not the probability of closing, but […]
In 2015, there is little argument about the merits of having a diverse board of directors – including the fact that companies with at least one woman on their board had better returns than companies with none, as this Bloomberg editorial points out. Yet the percentage of women on boards continues to lag significantly, with […]