Why I Invested in Maven; Series A by a16z

Hi everyone, I'm utgarsh. Today I'm really excited to announce my investment in Maven, which I did a few months back. Today maven has raised 20 million from Andreessen Horowitz. Basically, Maven is a platform for running cohort based courses or cbc. The founders, Gagan, Bayani, Wescow and Shreyans have all illustrious backgrounds building interesting tech companies and education companies. And one reason why I'm of course excited for this investment is a blue chip investor has come on board, but at a more fundamental level because I feel that cohort based courses are going to revolutionize the way we learn. MOOCs massively open online courses have a completion rate of anywhere between 3 and 5%. But what CBCs do is to transform this passive learning into an active learning experience experience and make sure that the students who are enrolling for a particular course are invested, their doubts are cleared, and at the end of the program they don't just graduate with a certificate. They graduate with a network, a set of actionable skills and a community that they can lean on to discuss, ideate and connect and take ideas forward. Network Capital has been running CBCs for over a year now. And today we are very happy to share that we have thousands of happy subscribers who love the Network Capital experience. Basically the way we combine the content, community and career intelligence piece. And this is critical. These three Cs are the fundamental building blocks of the future of learning. The reason I'm so bullish on this combination of these 3C model is because I've seen the way people engage with Network Capital. Before the fellowships were structured and scaled, and the way they engage with us now, there was still a lot of traction. We've been blessed to have a community that loves what we've been doing. But ever since these CBCs came into being, the way people have been engaging with the platform, Network Capital tv, with each other, either through the course of the fellowship or before and after that. The alumni network, the kind of teachers we've been able to attract, has been something of a learning experience for me. What's been even more energizing is to see the way learners and the teachers have come together in the middle of the pandemic. In countries like India, the pandemic is far from over. But the way the students and teachers have come together, it's given me a lot of hope that this will probably leave us in a stronger state. That's not why we should be happy about it or celebrate it, but I'm just an optimist who tries to look for the edge cases and things that make us happy. So of course we are not in a position to discuss valuation and numbers of my investments or the companies that I run. But it's safe to say that it's something with strong fundamentals, a strong team, a blue chip investor, and at an elemental level, what it takes to transform passive learning, which was demonstrated by MOOCs, into active learning, where CVCs are about to champion. I think when we look at education in the 21st century, especially after the pandemic, you will see unbundling of this at scale. The role of an institution is going to be revolutionized and the different aspects that people got out of universities, especially good ones, the brand, the network, the signaling value, the educational component, it's going to be broken and disrupted by different companies and hopefully both the public and private sector will play along. But I think gone are the days where people will be able to rest on the laurels of the universities they went to and they will have to make learning a lifelong endeavor. And when lifelong is the goal, then you know that you're not prepping just for an exam or a job. You're basically preparing for a life that you kind of build. So on network capital, we look at fellowships in building a base. Think of it like, I don't know what I want to do with my life fellowship, the CEO fellowship. Then there are skill based fellowships. Think of them as writing, public speaking, critical thinking, all of that. Then we have the summer school for kids, because the way we think, the way we learn this needs to be inculcated from the very beginning. We can't set a timeline that, okay, let's first become 2029, get our MBAs, and then figure out how to lead our lives. This life deferment strategy doesn't seem to work. And then we have fellowships which are focused on different sectors like the investing fellowship, the product management fellowship. And I think as new kinds of careers come to fore, as new kinds of jobs are defined, as passion economy becomes more mainstream, I'm especially excited to see how education, the sector and the skilling sector and the employment sector, all of these engage carefully to create a trinity that actually works for the students and works for the entire ecosystem. If you look at the rate at which the wages have been growing and the rate at which the cost of education has been growing in countries like the U.S. it's just making education an unviable opportunity for most. And I think we cannot let that happen, which is why I'm really excited that network Capital is doing as well as it is thanks to your love and maven. A company that we invested in has just raised a significant amount from Andreessen Horowitz. I think fundraise does not mean success. There is still a long way to go, a long set of experiments to be tried out and tested. But the way I've engaged and I've seen the founders engage with the investors and the way they've been building, it seems that they're really focused on getting the unit economics right, getting the right kind of instructors, and just doing whatever it takes to get learners to the outcome they deserve. I think the time to build a rebuild education is now and we need to be participants in this, even if, you know, we are not students ourselves. Because it's a national priority, it's an international priority. Covid crisis, if it has shown us anything, is that we need to look at problems of the world as interconnected sets. And this is problems like climate change, viruses, pandemics, the possibility of disruption due to artificial intelligence, etc. These can't just have national strategies. So we need to think about people investing in different countries, people connecting with people from different backgrounds and trying to create a new normal which is focused on outcomes for all as opposed to parochial definitions of what success means. I hope this was useful. It's a great day for Network Capital and for me personally. I thank you all for your support and hope to see you very soon. Take care.