Our Investment in Hilight
The Long Term Impact team is excited to announce our investment in Hilight. Hilight is a social platform that empowers schools and districts to share and celebrate the work their teachers and other school staff are doing every day. The company allows school staff to recognize each other for being awesome in ways big and small. It also empowers administrators to surface things that are already working so that they can be shared more widely.
Our Investment in Short Answer
We at Long Term Impact are excited to announce our investment in Short Answer. Short Answer helps K12 teachers build better writers through engaging peer feedback activities for any subject. The company empowers teachers to increase the amount of daily writing practice taking place in their classrooms without increasing their workload.
Make Something Buyers Want – A Simple Explanation of Product-Sales Fit
At Long Term Impact, we believe a critical ingredient for success of an early stage edtech startup is that founding team has fully embraced being Salesperson #1 – especially if they are pursuing the “third way” of growth. The longer the founders avoid sales, the further they fall behind in finding product-sales fit. What is product-sales fit?
Our Investment in Evision Academy
We at Long Term Impact are excited to announce our investment in Evision Academy. Evision is an education solutions company established in 2021 to empower students who are blind or visually impaired with critical life skills. Evision’s first product is the Braille Box, an innovative and engaging solution for teaching students how to read Braille.
You Are Salesperson Number 1 (your startup's survival depends on it)
We’ve encountered a big mistake in how early stage founders are spending their limited time, energy, and resources:
No one on the founding team has fully embraced being “Salesperson #1”
Without anyone on the founding team being Salesperson #1, we believe that the startup will likely fail to reach the three milestones above – specifically, they will reach the end of their runway before finding enough product-sales fit to break even.
Bootstrapping or Hypergrowth? Finding a Third Way of Growth at Goalbook.
Many early stage edtech founders believe that there are only two paths for creating a sustainable and impactful company: bootstrapping or hypergrowth.
We want you to know there’s another way! Goalbook is an edtech company that Justin and I founded in 2011 and our growth path wasn’t pure bootstrapping nor VC-funded hypergrowth. We stumbled upon a “third way” of growing an edtech company.
Introducing Long Term Impact
At Long Term Impact, we take a different approach to investing. Our number one goal is to support entrepreneurs and their vision for impact. In that spirit, we have adopted a revenue-based financing instrument that aims to provide entrepreneurs with maximum flexibility. As long as an entrepreneur we invest in continues to maintain a strong focus on impact and financial sustainability, we will fully support them to have as much flexibility as they want.