Investment strategy
Zanichelli Venture is the Italian leading textbook publisher Zanichelli Editore’s investment initiative, focusing on early-stage edtech startups.
We think about edtech in the widest way: «from pre-K to grey», we’re looking for founders building tools that can act as radical power-ups of the learner’s experience while slipping seamlessly into the current education system; or creating alternatives to the current education system with the potential to move from niche to dominant.
We co-invest mostly in Europe and North America, following trusted, local lead investors.
We usually participate in seed, pre-A and A rounds, and we’re ready to keep supporting our portfolio companies with follow-ons in later rounds. We also like to get to know founders and their ideas as soon as possible: feel free to get in touch even if you’re idea-stage or pre-seed!
We will support and finance ideas with the potential to have a positive impact on our future through education at every stage of our life. We will respectfully, discreetly stand by the entrepreneurs who believe in these ideas, from the beginnings and, at least, until that impact leaves its first dent.
We care about each startup in our portfolio getting the full value of a more than 150-year-old education company like Zanichelli can offer, whenever our expertise can be a lodestar because of our history, our mission, our network, our resources; and we believe in getting out of the founders’ way otherwise, if we are not adding value.
We also care about the startup’s long-term self-sustainability and our financial returns. As a corporate venture capital fund, we are happy if our investments also yield collaboration opportunities, insights, innovative thinking and entrepreneurial energy for the benefit of Zanichelli’s digital products designers, editorial staff and IT. But we know that it may be only in the long term after trust between us and the founders has built through intense collaboration and once the startup has fully expressed its full potential as a well-established company, that we can explore together paths to a deeper partnership.
About Zanichelli Editore
Zanichelli Editore has been in the textbook business in Italy for more than a hundred and fifty years.
It has published the first Italian translation of Darwin’s «On the origin of species» back in 1864, Einstein’s «Relativity: the special and the general theory» in 1921, and it’s the market leader for most scientific subjects in middle and high school textbooks.
It’s been developing digital educational products since the late Nineties.
Active portfolio
KiDE Science is a playful science academy, supporting children in their natural ability to wonder and question, developing play-based STEAM learning and resources to foster scientific thinking skills in 3 to 8-year-olds.
KiDE uses stories and play to draw out kids’ curiosity towards natural phenomena.
Every child will get to experience what it feels like to successfully experiment as they solve scientific puzzles and find answers to their own questions.
Accelerate Learning acquired Kide Science in October 2023.
Aktiv Learning (formerly 101edu) is transforming STEM education with a next-generation learning platform that fosters student engagement and improves student outcomes.
The company's first product for chemistry courses, Aktiv Chemistry (formerly Chem101), has quickly acquired adoptions at 500+ colleges and universities across North America.
Aktiv Mathematics is now revolutionizing how students learn in Developmental Math and other lower-division college math courses.
Top Hat acquired Aktiv Learning in December 2022.
Mindstone, the platform for compound learning, makes it easier for learners to draw valuable connections between their learning materials — including your resources, notes, highlights and discussions.
Students, lifelong learners, or professionals can organise their resources, annotate them with highlights and comments, collaborate with shared libraries and notes and remember using flashcards powered by Mindstone's learning algorithm.
Foundry College provides adults with a future-ready education by combining the durable professional skills that employers seek with in-demand, job-relevant credentials.
Students learn in live, face-to-face classes in an online environment that leverages the latest research in the science of learning and active learning pedagogy.
London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) is building a radical new university preparing students to tackle some of the most complex problems that we face in the world.
The LIS curriculum cuts across the disciplines, equipping students with knowledge and methods from the arts, sciences, and humanities.
LIS also offers leadership programmes that go way beyond mainstream business education. Leaders will broaden their problem-solving set and bring to bear the full extent of their expertise on the most important challenges they face.
NewCampus is a business education platform for the modern workforce.
They boost the careers of working learners by helping them build their network, learn actionable skills, and be inspired by top business leaders.
A pioneer in K–12 education since 2000, Amplify is leading the way in next-generation curriculum and formative assessment.
All of the programs in ELA, math, and science provide teachers with powerful tools that help them understand and respond to the needs of their students. Today, Amplify serves more than three million students in all 50 states.
Sparkwise gives teams an exciting way to build skills and grow together, through multiplayer challenges, available on demand: it’s where professional development meets escape room.
Their multiplayer platform fully guides active learning in groups. Learners build skills by solving fast-paced challenges, engaging in meaningful conversations, and gaining world-class insights.
EvidenceB designs adaptative learning resources based on the latest research on cognitive science and artificial intelligence to stimulate core knowledge acquisition and intrinsic motivation.
zick learn makes enterprise learning simple, fast and efficient again, empowering organizations to create and deliver beautiful text-based courses that reach the learners through the main chat apps and deliver the courses right in their employees’ pockets.
As Italy's leading AI Academy, Data Masters offers comprehensive training in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Science.
They have designed the most cutting-edge Italian-language courses to cultivate the specialist skills forecasted to be in high demand in the near future. The programs are led by seasoned professionals, who are constantly pushing the boundaries with the most innovative and progressive solutions in the field.
Tomorrow University of Applied Sciences is a fully-accredited, remote-first institution that allows learners to build the 21st-century skills needed in sustainability, entrepreneurship, and technology.
They are building a community of empowered and connected individuals who will create a brighter, more sustainable future, combining state-of-the-art learning science and technology to create flexible, accessible, and effective learning experiences.
Anthropos helps companies map, verify, and build skills to transform their business. They build and use skills paths to train for any type of role, program, skills or certification, integrating their existing content and external libraries, and leverage AI Simulations to test and prepare employees for new roles using real-life scenarios or map the skills already in their workforce.
News
Zanichelli Venture launches “Sight on EdTech”, a Medium page filled with EdTech insights through interviews with start-up founders and EdTech leaders
Zanichelli Venture lands on Medium with “Sights on EdTech”, an online page dedicated to sharing EdTech insights from start-up founders and EdTech leaders across different spaces, such as The Future of Work, Language Learning and more.
Through biweekly publications, we will be exploring how successful EdTech ventures have developed and how technology is creating new market opportunities and facilitating the way we learn.
Visit our page on Medium to read more about trends in the EdTech sector and follow the page to stay tuned for the next publications!
U.S.–Italia Education Innovation Festival: connecting U.S. and Italian edtech ecosystems, on September, 21-23rd 2020 in Naples
Zanichelli Venture is proud to be among the first partners – alongside StartED, EdMaven and EdTech Week – in the first global edtech event in Italy, organized and presented by the Center for Education Reform and Stoà. The event will be held both virtually and in person.
The U.S.-Italia Education Innovation Festival will link entrepreneurs from the U.S. and Italy in an exploratory new partnership for innovating education. A successful first event may lead to the creation of an Italian-based accelerator and incubator for Italian and other European startups.
Would you like to be part of this? Read about sponsoring, exhibiting, speaking and attending on the event’s website.
Zanichelli Venture sponsors the Italian translation of the HundrED webpage to share best teaching practices during COVID-19
Zanichelli Venture has provided funding to translate in Italian a series of 27+ tools and ideas to improve the quality of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, published on the HundrED website.
The tools were accurately selected by HundrED, a not-for-profit company that aims to innovate the K12 education space, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a worldwide economic organisation that shapes public policies to improve human wellbeing.
Open the COVID-19 solutions panels on the HundrED website to find out how each tool can help you improve your teaching!
Zanichelli Venture hosts EdTechX Global Startup Super League’s Italian semifinal, on May, 18th 2019 in Bologna
Zanichelli Venture has worked alongside EdTechXEurope to bring the most important international edtech pitch competition to Italy.
The event will take place during University of Bologna’s StartUp Day, Italy’s leading event for youth entrepreneurship.
The winner, selected by these judges and the audience in attendance, will then receive the chance to pitch against 27 other startups in front of 900+ global thought leaders at the annual EdTechXEurope summit as part of the final Global Startup Super League Competition.
More information about the event and the call for participants (in Italian).
Team
Enrico Poli
As the director of Zanichelli Venture, I’m looking for nascent companies who are tilling daring ideas about education and technology and searching for pre-seed or seed funding to grow these ideas into products empowering anyone – from children and parents to adult, professional lifelong learners and their mentors and coaches – to learn and teach better.
Previously, along with a most awesome team of three, I sustained senior management at Zanichelli Editore in working out our digital strategy and I led the creation of a modern software house in the middle of our 150 years old textbook publishing business, as a sort of in-house startup.
I care about how people teach and learn, how they tackle complex or difficult information, how they get to solve problems together. I study the ways new technologies can help and not hinder them. Education offers a critical testing ground.
Alessandro Camassa
As Zanichelli Venture’s financial analyst, I find the hidden stories in P&Ls and balance sheets, and I help the founders align their vision and their numbers.
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