SEI Ventures is a corporate-backed seed fund that invests in ed-tech startups. It is part of Strategic Education, Inc (SEI).
SEI owns and manages a broad portfolio of education institutions and ed-tech startups, including Strayer University, Capella University, which together enroll over 80,000 students per year. We run four coding schools, three focused on helping working adults find better jobs and a fourth focused on building computer science skills of elementary and middle school students. We manage a remedial learning platform, Sophia, designed to help prospective college students satisfy remedial course requirements at a faster pace and at much lower cost than typical. And we have a suite of services and tools designed for our more than 500 corporate partners to whom we deliver training, offer unique degree programs, and support their talent development priorities.
Through all of this, we focus on improving college affordability, student engagement and workforce readiness, we support the growing majority of non-traditional students and ensure that our graduates have the skills required to succeed in today’s jobs.
At SEI, we have built a workplace culture that embraces new ideas, technologies that support better pedagogy, and tools that make student support (e.g., financial aid, career services) better and more transparent. At most times, SEI has several new technology pilots running with ed-tech startups. We set these up as A-B tests to measure outcomes and provide our startup founders the feedback they need to improve their products. Given this, SEI has built a track record of helping startups test products, build more compelling features, and demonstrate efficacy.
SEI Ventures is our newly launched investment management group. As a corporate-backed fund we invest in innovative ed. tech. startups and help them grow.
SEI Ventures has formalized many of the support practices developed by SEI in working with partners, including: product testing, LMS and CMS integration, and go-to-market activities (including pricing, market segmentation, marketing strategy, competitive analysis). By working with a company on all aspects of the business, we become partners and lend our full support to move the startup forward. Our innovative start-ups can test products across our degree programs and with our base of 80,000+ learners and students. We’ve also helped a number of founders improve their products, accelerate their go-to-market activities, and grow their businesses.
ABOUT THE POSITION – SENIOR ASSOCIATE
An exciting and varied position, the Senior Associate supports the Managing Director and Partners in building SEI’s portfolio of ed-tech startups. As an associate you will have the unique opportunity to help improve higher education and promote economic mobility. You will:
- Perform market research to help identify new investment trends and opportunities
- Deal origination: Develop prospect lists of target companies in whom SEI Ventures might invest
- Deal screening: call and/or meet with prospects, evaluate opportunities
- Documentation: summarize call notes, enter deals into CRM
- Network with peers in other VC firms, incubators, accelerators, and foundations
- Perform due diligence
- Gather information from target companies and industry experts
- Research and talk to existing references and customers of target companies
- Conduct competitive analyses in markets of target companies
- Research and talk with technical/business consultants to evaluate the target companies’ technology and intellectual property
- Perform valuation analysis via modelling
- Prepare investment presentations for the investment committee
WE’RE LOOKING FOR SOMEONE WITH…
- 5-7+ years’ work experience with a financial service, strategy, consulting, venture capital, and/or private equity
- Demonstrated interest in social impact investing, patient capital, or microfinance, etc.
- Demonstrated interest in Educational Technology preferred but not required
- Demonstrated capacity for collaboration and teamwork at all levels of tenure
- Proven ability to effectively manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment
If interested, please apply here.
