"She was my own personal professor at home, working with me on my homework and forcing me to do her summer school -always wanting me to get ahead," Garvey said. It was a way for Garvey's mother to move up economically and build a better life for her family, and she always emphasized its importance to her children. She grew up the daughter of a college professor at Elon University in North Carolina, and education was always emphasized in her household. Garvey, Carolan, Chu, and Sosnik went on to found the massive edtech-focused firm Reach Capital, and Garvey has since cemented her status as a pioneering investor in the sector.Īt a personal level, Garvey likes to view venture capital investing as a way to make learning more exciting and accessible to everyone. "We wanted to also grow with them and expand our impact," said Garvey. It was a big leap of faith, but they decided to go for it.
It was clear that there could be a market for a new larger, edtech-focused specialist venture fund that backed early stage entrepreneurs. Many of the startups the team at NewSchools had backed were growing quickly, and beginning to attract attention from large venture capital funds like Insight Partners and Kleiner Perkins.
But she and longtime collaborators Jennifer Carolan, Wayee Chu, and Esteban Sosnik saw an opportunity. She had already been a chemical engineer at Procter & Gamble, and then decided to make the jump into education and investing.Īt the time, Garvey was a partner at NewSchools, a nonprofit philanthropy fund, and had been backing early stage education startups for around three years. It was 2015 and Shauntel Garvey wanted to build something new.
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