With the long-term rise in Ed Tech investments – starting in roughly 2007 – many analysts have been predicting a fall for several years. Maybe not a bubble burst like we saw in 2001, but a real drop in activity and volume. Now we also find out that there is also a 70% drop in mergers and acquisition […]
Venture capital
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 […]
Year-end Updates on e-Literate News Posts
For my final 2014 post, I thought it would be interesting to provide year-end updates to some news posts on e-Literate over the past year. You’ll notice that there is somewhat of an emphasis on negative stories or implications. For most positive stories, companies and institutions are typically all too happy to send out press releases […]
e-Literate Top 20 Posts For 2014
I typically don’t write year-end reviews or top 10 (or 20) lists, but I need to work on our consulting company finances. At this point, any distraction seems more enjoyable than working in QuickBooks. We’ve had a fun year at e-Literate, and one recent change is that we are now more willing break stories when […]
Say What? Buzzfeed follows up on D2L story with solid reporting
In a post last month I questioned the growth claims that D2L was pushing to the media based on their recent massive funding round. A key part of the article was pointing out the lack of real reporting from news media. It is worth noting that not a single media outlet listed by EDUKWEST or […]
D2L raises $85 million but growth claims defy logic
Yesterday D2L announced a second round of investment, this time raising $85 million (a mix of debt and equity) to go with their $80 million round two years ago (see EDUKWEST for a useful roundup of news and article links). While raising $165 million is an impressive feat, does this funding give us new information on […]
Six Months After Layoffs: No signs of growth at Desire2Learn
Late last year I wrote a post about Desire2Learn’s laying off more than 7% of the workforce, speculating that something had changed at the company. In particular, I didn’t buy the company line about continued growth. In the end, I have trouble believing that these recent cuts are solely based on improving Desire2Learn’s growth without needing […]