LearnDay is raising a Crowd SAFE at an $11 million valuation with no discount. LearnDay’s financials are a bit difficult to parse given that the company is an aggregation of several pre-existing online learning brands. The legal entity for LearnDay was only developed last year. According to LearnDay’s raise page, the company generated more than $400,000 in revenue over the last year and roughly $820,000 in cumulative sales. That quantity of revenue doesn’t justify an $11 million valuation. But LearnDay does own intellectual property around its courses. Therefore, LearnDay’s price rating is just above average. 

Online learning and training was a growing trend before 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic made it rapidly accelerate. In fact, the global online learning market is expected to grow at a strong 14.6% annual growth rate over the next five years, hitting almost $375 billion by 2026. LearnDay only addresses the North American market at present. Given that online learning market growth is driven by increasing demand from Asia, a conservative estimate of North America’s share of the global market is 25%. With that assumption, LearnDay’s addressable North American market is roughly $94 billion. 

It’s also worth noting that the industry specialties of LearnDay’s courses are growing. The company’s most established courses seem to be in insurance sales. The number of insurance agents in the US continues to grow steadily, if slowly. LearnDay also offers courses in blockchain technology, which is a rapidly growing industry. The global blockchain market is expected to hit a staggering 67.3% annual growth rate over the next four years.  

Overall, LearnDay is addressing a growing online learning market that is garnering more interest as online education becomes more popular and a traditional college degree becomes increasingly expensive. LearnDay offers courses in high-growth professional areas. As a result, the company’s market rating is strong.

LearnDay was founded by a small team of experienced online educators, and all three appear to have already owned e-learning companies that merged together to form LearnDay. CEO Jacques Wong has around eight years of experience as an insurance agent, which seems to have led him to create a line of insurance certification courses that ultimately became the foundation for LearnDay. President Chris Greyling is a serial entrepreneur with experience founding at least four other companies over the last 15 years. His most recent venture is BlocksEDU, which now offers LearnDay’s blockchain courses. Lastly, Chief Learning Officer Wayne Van Damme is also a founder of BlocksEDU.

All in all, the LearnDay team has strong experience in developing and selling online professional training courses, primarily in insurance and blockchain technologies. They also have decent business experience, with several prior companies between them. However, none of the three LearnDay executives seem to be devoted to the company full-time, which is a major concern given that developing new courses is a time-consuming endeavor. CEO Jacques Wong is also the least experienced of the three executives. While he has worked in insurance for several years, he has not led a successful startup before. As a result, LearnDay’s team rating is one of its lowest.

LearnDay is not the first company to offer professional certification and job training courses. The growth in the online learning industry means that a number of competitors are eyeing this space, some with meaningful venture capital backing. For example, professional training startup NextStep raised $3.6 million last year to train certified nursing assistants. There are numerous other cases of startups tackling professional training for specific high-growth industries. 

LearnDay will be forced to compete with these other online course providers along traditional lines: quality and price. In terms of quality, it’s not clear whether LearnDay is outpacing competitors yet. LearnDay’s website does not seem to be anything special. The company does not yet appear to convey a highly professionalized, trustworthy brand. LearnDay also lacks price differentiation. Mainstream test prep leaders like Kaplan offer online courses for $200 to $300, while LearnDay’s similar courses are around the same price. To be competitive, LearnDay courses need to be cheap enough to overcome the inherent trustworthiness of a name brand like Kaplan.  

All in all, LearnDay’s products are very similar in quality and price to a wide variety of both established brands and up-and-coming companies. It’s also not clear how defensible LearnDay’s offerings are, given the quantity of similar courses on the market. Therefore, LearnDay’s differentiation rating is below average.

LearnDay’s performance is relatively difficult to judge, as the company is seemingly a conglomerate of other pre-existing online learning companies. LearnDay’s Form C filing indicates that the company generated roughly $287,000 in revenue in 2020, up from $173,000 in 2019. LearnDay posted a narrow net loss both years, at $12,000 in 2019 and $28,000 in 2020. It’s not entirely clear how these figures square up with LearnDay’s assertion that the company has generated $820,000 in total, with $400,000 in revenue over the last 12 months. 

Details on enrollment are equally fuzzy. LearnDay has apparently registered over 20,000 enrollments, though with just 5,300 students. It seems unlikely for students to enroll in an average of four courses each, but LearnDay doesn’t offer any more information to explain the numbers. 

While performance is not well-described in LearnDay’s raise materials, it is clear that the company is generating decent revenue and has sold its course packages to several thousand students. That’s more traction than many early-stage companies achieve, so LearnDay’s performance rating is above average.

LearnDay is a relatively risky investment, particularly given the lack of information available for investors to review. Primarily, investors should note financial risk. LearnDay isn’t generating very significant revenue, and it’s not clear how cash flows between the various subsidiary businesses operated by LearnDay. Given this level of revenue traction, LearnDay’s investment terms (a high valuation with no discount) also pose a risk for investors. Lastly, the LearnDay team is not dedicated to the business full-time, and the company’s CEO has limited operating experience.

LearnDay is operating within an industry that is undoubtedly growing. Demand for online job skill courses is likely to increase rapidly in coming years. However, it’s not clear that LearnDay is a competitive provider of those courses. Mainstream test prep brands like Kaplan offer a number of professional certifications that are well regarded and trustworthy. When selecting an expensive course that must help them pass an important professional exam, a customer might be suspicious of LearnDay’s mediocre brand and traction. 

Prospective investors might also be concerned that LearnDay’s raise materials offer very little insight into key questions about how the various subsidiary companies are connected to LearnDay, how the company navigates a team of part-time executives, and how it plans to develop new courses in industries outside of the founders’ areas of expertise. The last question in particular is an important one. Developing new courses is a huge undertaking, but it’s not clear that LearnDay has a strong plan to prepare, launch, and grow courses in entirely new professional verticals. Without those new courses, LearnDay’s growth will likely stagnate.

While there are concerns about LearnDay’s differentiation and operating know-how, the company has undeniably built solid traction from its current portfolio of courses. Founder Jacques Wong is an experienced insurance agent who has clearly found success as an insurance certification instructor. The insurance agency is growing, if slowly, so that niche alone could allow some level of continued growth for LearnDay. In addition, LearnDay’s blockchain technologies courses are affiliated with trustworthy higher education institutions and seem to have a decent track record of success. All in all, LearnDay has educated a good number of students who are satisfied with their experiences. 

In addition, the market for online learning and professional certification courses specifically is so large that LearnDay can likely eke out market share despite intense competition in the space. By finding core industry niches and doubling down on referral incentives for existing happy customers, LearnDay could continue to bring in increasing revenues (with minimal operating expenses).

LearnDay is an online learning company focused on training aspiring insurance agents, financial planners, blockchain technologists, and more. The company’s professional certification courses are focused on disrupting the traditional higher education model by offering practical, exam-ready skills to place students in professions that don’t require a college degree. Several thousand students have taken LearnDay courses so far, and the company plans to continue expanding its course offerings. 

LearnDay is competing against a wide variety of other test prep brands and niche companies offering certification courses for particular industries. LearnDay doesn’t offer detailed plans to overcome this competition and maintain steady growth. Moreover, the company is led by part-time executives, including a relatively inexperienced CEO. Therefore, LearnDay has been rated a Neutral Deal. 

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