Welcoming Dan Sommer
It is with great excitement that today we welcome serial entrepreneur Dan Sommer to Founder Collective as our newest Founder Partner!
I’ve watched Dan’s impressive entrepreneurial journey for over twenty years. In fact, we both jumped into the deep-end of startups together during DotCom 1.0 where we co-founded a company together. The lessons of that experience were many, not the least of which was that Dan was someone I knew I’d be friends with and work with for years to come.
Dan brings a wealth of experience to the team, but he massively increases our understanding of the EdTech market. In 2019, Dan’s most recent startup, Trilogy Education — a fresh take on “coding boot camps,” was acquired by EdTech giant 2U for $750M. Trilogy’s exit is one of the most significant EdTech exits in recent years and among the largest NYC tech acquisitions over the last decade.
We have incredible admiration for the way Dan built Trilogy Education. We’ve written a lot about the benefits that “capital efficiency” confers to founders, and Trilogy is a great example. Dan made the wise decision to grow revenue significantly before taking outside capital to further scale. And when it was time to scale, he sure did. At the time of sale in just under 4 years, Trilogy partnered with over 50 top tier universities in 55 cities and 7 countries. The team topped out at just over 2,500 employees, and $150M in sales.
Prior to Trilogy, Dan was the founder and CEO of Caridan Marketing Labs– a social media marketing agency focussed on the higher education sector, which he sold to Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA), going on to serve in key operating roles including President, Global Education.
Dan is an enthusiastic investor, advisor, board member and coach to entrepreneurs building companies at the intersection of learning and earning, through 10ximpact.co.
We’re also thrilled that Dan gives us another team member in NYC. While the startup world has never been more global, and we’ve all become used to working virtually, we think New York City and the Northeast, in general, will continue to be a hub for some of the best startups in the world, and we want to meet them here.
Please help me welcome Dan to Founder Collective by following him on LinkedIn, where I’m sure he’ll be providing quite an education!
