It has now been four weeks since Chegg announced a data breach compromising personal information of up to 40 million users. Cue the crickets because the only coverage in ed tech press thus far is from EdWeek, which focuses on the K-12 market. That’s a shame, because if ed tech companies want a case study […]
Chegg
Chegg Data Breach May Affect Up To 40 Million Users
Chegg data breach exposes up to 40 million registered users for loss of personal information, but company appears to focus first on stock price.
A Big Reason That Digital Textbooks Are Misunderstood
Chegg, which is in the midst of a dramatic change in their business model by moving from textbook rentals to digital student services, got slammed last week in the stock market. After reporting mixed results of better-than-expected earnings yet worse-than-expected revenues, their stock price lost 35% in one day (Feb 22). But this is not […]
The Massive Decline In Larger Education Company Market Caps
After our coverage of Blackboard’s CEO change last week, we were both interviewed by the Washington Business Journal, with the following lede: Analysts and sources I spoke with Monday, both on and off the record, said the decision to bring on Bill Ballhaus as CEO was a combination of Bhatt failing to make progress building […]
Pitchbook Lists Most Valuable Ed Tech Companies
Update: Jeez – sorry about the multiple typos (mistakenly showed in thousands instead of millions). Fixed now. Pitchbook – a database service for M&A, private equity and venture capital – listed in Hot Topics what they saw as the top ten most valuable ed tech companies based on public valuations1. The definition of startup is […]
Links to External Articles and Interviews
Last week I was off the grid (not just lack of Internet but also lack of electricity), but thanks to publishing cycles I managed to stay artificially productive: two blog posts and one interview for an article. Post at 20MM on Textbook Preference Report: It’s Difficult to Prefer What You Can’t Access Last week brought […]
Why VCs Usually Get Ed Tech Wrong
I don’t often get to write these words, but there is a new must-read blog post on educational technology by a venture capitalist. Rethink Education’s Matt Greenfield argues that there is no generalized bubble in ed tech investment; rather, the problem is that the venture community has a habit of systematically betting on the wrong […]