Meimei Yang

Ed-Tech Sector is Booming?

Anyone whos ever sat

with spotty annotations, they

Today, the company counts

65 per cent between 2007

in on a 500-undergraduate

started sharing notebooks

over 60,000 users across

and 2012. By comparison,

lecture knows that taking

and spending afternoons

Canada and 14 employees.

the second-best performing

good notes can get tricky,

together at the library going

says 23-year old Jack Tai.

over material covered in class.

What if you happen to be

sitting too far to hear
properly? Or, worse still,
what if youre an international
student?
That was the case for

Notesolution is part of
Canadas so-called ed-tech

Four years and three

boom, with software

Bachelors degrees later, in

companies catering to

September 2010,

students, teachers

Tai, Wu and Li

and professional

launched

trainers sprouting

Notesolution, a

up all over the

Tais classmate Jackey Li,

website that lets students

country. The last few years

whod just landed at the

share notes online without

have seen education shoot to

University of Toronto from

having to line up at the

the top of the charts in terms

China. But their friend Kevin

photocopy machine. They

of startup activity. According

Wu, a native Canadian, also

started marketing the service

to a recent CIBC study, the

had trouble transcribing what

at their alma mater, and within

ranks of self-employed

he heard in class. The three

the first year we had 9,000

Canadians working in the

bonded over those struggles

registered users, says Tai.

sector grew by a staggering

1

startup industry in Canada,

healthcare, saw growth of less
than 25 per cent during the
same period. Canadas edtech champion is arguably
Desire2Learn, a provider of
software solutions for
educational applications that
has boldlyand successfully
taken on U.S. giant
Blackboard. The Kitchener,
Ont.-based startup secured
$80 million in funding in its
latest round of financing
earlier this year, a significant
venture capital investment
even by U.S. standards and

Meimei Yang

the largest such investment on

2002 and 2011, rising to

Canadian entrepreneurs

event hosted by Microsoft

record in a Canadian

$429 million from $146 million,

come up against: relatively

where promising startups in

education-related business.

according to the National

scarce capital and risk-averse

the field got a chance to

Venture Capital

investors. Whenever pitching

mingle with a whos who of

Association.

to a Canadian venture capital

Californias tech industry.

The Canadian trend

mirrors whats happening
south of the border. In

fund, says Notesolutions

Perhaps unsurprisingly,

Tai, the first question that

The company is receiving

California, ed-tech is the

those numbers are much

latest hot thing. Startup

smaller in Canada, where

forums are abuzz with chatter

similar deals by local venture

about how education software

capital funds accounted for

will save the world, from

only $116 million between

revolutionizing academia to

2008 and 2012, according to

bringing free knowledge to the

Thomson Reuters data.

low-income students and the

Between 2007 and the first

several others are getting

attract applicants, according

developing world, as

half of this year, ed-tech

some loving from Silicon

to GrowthWorks Atlantic

purported by Coursera,

companies made up only 3.6

Valley. In June, Tai and Wu

CEO Tom Hayes. Weve

which offers online courses on

per cent of software

were in San Francisco

been very pleased, he says,

anything from Contemporary

investment, and a meager 0.6

schmoozing with U.S.

were pretty bullish about

American Poetry to

per cent of overall investment.

investors and faculty from

where that might take us.

Computational Finance at no
cost. Investment in educationrelated software companies
has nearly tripled between

comes up is: are you

profitable yet? In the U.S.,
he says, its about selling a
vision, rather than having
established revenue flows.
Luckily, Notesolution and

Stanford and the University

The sector, it seems,

of California, Berkley. They

hasnt escaped the familiar

attended the Launch

constraints so many

Education Conference, an
2

great interest from universities

in the U.K. Recent cuts to
higher education funding
there are making college
applicants more selective and
heightening competition
among schools trying to