Presenting: Stride Learning

Presenting:

This educational venture analysis (EVA) will be on Stride Learning.

WELCOME

Table of Contents

Risks and Mitigation

Rationale for Analysis

SWOT Analysis

What is Stride Learning?

Investor Perspectives

The executive team

EVA recommendations

Market Position

References

Revenue model

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What is Stride Learning?

Stride Learning is a for-profit education company founded in 2000 with the goal of supporting and enhancing the education experience for students, teachers and administrators through the use of innovative technologies. They offer a variety of services, including personalized tutors, individualized curricula, e-learning creation, and AI-powered learning insights.

What are the goals of stride?

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Reason for analysis

Why Stride Learning? Stride Learning exists to help learners in all levels of learning from K-12, adult learning and corporate learning achieve their goals through education that works for that individual using learning technologies. As an educational venture analyst (EVA), I want to showcase Stride Learning who has been around for 20 years and how it continues to innovate learning technologies,serve its customers and have consistent financial returns for the investor. Stride Learning focuses on how an individual learns by maintaining advanced analytics, competency assessments and offers different strategies to support the learner through numerous means. Stride Learning is known for its variety of offerings to learners, teachers and administrative staff. I wanted to do an analysis into this company as it offers insight into numerous learning technologies available for all kinds of learners. As well, Stride Learning is run by a robust leadership team of previous venture leads, company mainstays and most importantly, educators. I wanted to see what success in a learning technology company looks like after 20 years and Stride Learning delivers on that.

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Meet the executives

CEO: James Rhyu

These are just some of the names that make Stride Learning an optimal company to invest in. The rest of the executive team have similar credentials and have either grown within the company since its inception or have powerful resumes that fit well into the corporate structure of Stride.

The current CEO is James Rhyu. James has been with the company since 2012, transferring from Match.com. Within Stride Learning, James has taken on lead roles in marketing, corporate strategy, finance and technology and successfully became the CEO in 2021 and has since taken on that role.

Vida Williams

Janice Grunenberg

Chief Data Officer

Vice President

Donna Blackman

Chief Financial Officer

Vida Williams is an experienced data engineer with a background in complex data structure and diversity initiatives in previous companies. Prior to working in Stride, she was the co-founder of a company that worked in data architecture, process engineering and data in 2013. She also has experience within government programs, working as the Chief data officer at the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Officer.

Janice Grunenberg is the executive VP of Stride Learning, responsible for the operations of the learning technologies of the company. She comes from 30 years of experience as an educator, starting as a frontline teacher all the way to an administrator. She has been with Stride Learning since it was a startup in 2005. Her experience is supporting curriculum creation and leads the subject matter experts in education within the company. Janice has a Master's Degree in Special Education.

The current CFO is Donna Blackman, who has 20 years of experience leading and managing finances in large companies such as KPMG, BET and Marriott International. She joined Stride Learning in 2020 and presumes the tasks of accounting and strategic financial planning

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+ Strengths

+ Weaknesses

SWOT Analysis

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+ Opportunities

+ Threats

Market Position (Type, OfferingS and Buyers)

Stride Learning offers alternative learning solutions to support learners from Kindergarten to adults wanting to transition into roles. Stride has numerous teams that offer services depending on their needs. Here are some examples of offerings (hover your mouse):

Full digital homeschooling programs

K12 E-Learning

Teachers on demand

Advanced administrative software for schools

E-Course development

Adult Education certifications

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Adult Career Education

• Microcourses for public and private insitutions

• Official certification for health and IT roles
• Virtual tutoring from live teachers

Revenue model and sources

General Education

• Create virtual education for all subjects in the K-12 spectrum
• Full homeschooling program from K-12

The main source of revenue for Stride Learning is the learners who enroll in the numerous programs offered by the company.

Title here

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$1.2 billion in Revenue in 2024

$750 million in Revenue in 2024

Public School Districts

• Create products to support public school curriculum from e-learning to administrative support to technology such as computers

Virtual Schools

• Full homeschooling program from K-12
• Virtual tutors with the use of real-life teachers or AI

Click here for full financial details

Individual Consumer Sales Any of the offerings above used for limited periods of time (purchase an e-course or time with virtual real-life teachers)

The company is in good shape as it provides a diverse array of services with a full breadth of customers

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Risks and Mitigation

Risks

Mitigation

• Stride going international - English K-12 education is being expanded globally
• Stride Learning microcourses credentialing are currently competing with in-house programs (such as Cybersecurity courses offered by Google). This was done by acquiring three adult learning companies and growing their features and partnerships with public and private institutions
• Strong focus on creating patented learning technologies that are exclusive to Stride Learning provide an edge in competing with e-learning, virtual education and automated administrative support

• A lot of competition from various companies that offer similar services that offer lower prices or sometimes at no cost at all.

• Other educational institutions that are creating their own “Stride Learning” model that cuts out Stride as the middleman. A few educational institutions and companies are listed that are recreating the approach, technologies and services provided by Stride.
• Decreased government funding of education at the federal or state level decreases revenue
• Increase in cyberattacks and decline of broadband infastructure

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Investor Perspective (Global Perspectives, What’s next?

• Stride sees an opportunity to go Global. They have identified the market of english language schools around the world, and Stride Learning is going to compete in the K-12 market for official english language certification. They have also identified a market for english language adult education certification.
• College prep courses. As a bridge between K-12 and adult learning, Stride is working towards college prep-level courses
• AI-enabled enhancements. Stride Learning is working towards enabling features that quickly adapts to the learner's needs in the moment. From it’s learner assessment features to it’s e-learning, AI is being embedded to keep responding to AI user needs through enrollment

• Continue to innovate and partner. Stride Learning is continuing to find an edge in learning technologies, which is either utilizing other forms of virtual education, such as wearables and immersion, new uses of AI or partnering with corporate partners to have more credentialing. Stride is focused on meeting needs and competing with the technology market.

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EVA Recommendations

Why I would invest in this venture

• Leadership team is experienced from being in the sector for 20 years and recognizes the need to innovate
• Company has a diverse approach to virtual learning and learning technologies that decrease risk
• Numerous partnerships with public and private institutions
• Strong global expansion plans

Why I would question this venture

• Company has many direct competitors that offer similar services at a lower price or is free
• Revenues are slim in relation to operating and innovation costs
• Revenues relies heavily on public education funding as majority of revenue comes from supporting public and charter schools

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References

Reuters. (2021, September 28). Stride, Inc. named best EdTech. Yahoo! Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stride-inc-named-best-edtech-132100872.html Stride, Inc. (2020, November 17). K12 rebrands itself as Stride, Inc. and announces two acquisitions. Market Brief. https://marketbrief.edweek.org/strategy-operations/k12-rebrands-itself-as-stride-inc-and-announces-two-acquisitions/2020/11 Stride, Inc. (2025). Annual reports. https://investors.stridelearning.com/financials/annual-reports/default.aspx Watts, J. (2021, February 10). Small-cap stock Stride is taking online education to new heights. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/markets/markets-news/Yolowire/31934162/small-cap-stock-stride-is-taking-online-education-to-new-heights/

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The goal of Stride Learning is to support individualized education through technology.

Stride Learning has products such as game based E-learning, AI or real-life tutors and a personalized curriculum builder. Stride has marketed itself as a way to be an alternative to traditional classrooms, previously focusing on homeschooled K-12 but has since grown into allowing learners to have different options to support their learning and has even grown into adult education and long-distance education for military families. Currently Stride Learning utilizes different forms of media, e-learning, virtual and in-person tutors for teaching and utilizes different software for career development and learning analysis. Stride is also partnering with different universities and accredited programs to provide IT and health fields certifications for career growth for adult learners and exam preparation for K-12 learners to progress into college and universities.

Strengths

Strengths (Internal Positive Factors)

• Robust offerings (Education is from K-12, higher education and corporate learning)
• Revenue streams are diverse (as stated above, Stride Learning touches on all facets of education)
• Strong digital infrastructure
• Experienced executive team

Threats

• New learning technology companies that have similar offerings but are cheaper
• Cuts in public education funding threaten partnerships with state and local schools
• Economic uncertainty limits spending by corporate partners
• Cybersecurity risks
• Constant need to innovate to stay ahead (quantum computing)
• New infrastructure needed to support new technologies could be a gamble (is it worth investing in AI when quantum is nearby?)

Opportunities (External Positive Factors)

• Growing market for adult learning and microlearning credentials
• Expansion of E-learning into corporate markets
• International market is currently being researched as an opportunity
• Increasing use of adaptive learning technologies for individualized learning
• Strategic partnerships with higher learning, local governments and corporations
• Focus outside of public K-12 and into charter and private schools

Weaknesses (Internal Negative Factors)

• Relies on funding from public education policies (state and federal)
• Complex business model with many specialties within the business. Each offering from the company can be its own micro company
• Tight profit margins
• Needs continuous innovation to stay relevant

Financials

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Got an idea?

Use this space to add awesome interactivity. Include text, images, videos, tables, PDFs... even interactive questions! Premium tip: Get information on how your audience interacts with your creation:

• Visit the Analytics settings;
• Activate user tracking;
• Let the communication flow!