Giving Compass' Take:

• Tony Wan, writing for EdSurge, discusses how future education technology investments will be affected by coronavirus as school budgets are developed over the summer.

• How is coronavirus impacting school budgets for the new year? How will this affect investment opportunities? 

• Learn how school districts can prepare for coronavirus. 

With coronavirus cooping people up in their homes and disrupting businesses across every industry, buckle down for leaner times. Conserve cash. Reduce spend. That’s the message that Sequoia Capital, one of the most active venture capital firms in the business, expressed in a note to its portfolio on March 5.

On the flip side, investors like Sequoia have plenty of “dry powder,” the industry parlance for cash on hand. According to PitchBook, private equity firms are sitting on $2.4 trillion. Axios reported that venture firms have cumulatively raised $100 billion over the past two years, and many are “open for business” and actively investing.

Count education-focused firms among them. Several established U.S. groups, including Owl Ventures and Rethink Education, raised new tranches of money in the past year; Reach Capital is currently raising its third fund. New groups have emerged, too, including Achieve Partners and two separate funds from Western Governors University.

Jennifer Carolan, general partner and co-founder of Reach Capital, says the dramatic changes in the world have not impacted her firm’s investments—yet. “We’ve been doing about one new investment every month. Things have not changed.”

Matt Greenfield, managing director of Rethink Education, also says activity has been about the same so far. “We still have a very rich pipeline” of incoming pitches and potential deals. “Coronavirus changed our travel behavior, but it’s certainly not changing our investment behavior.”

As school officials shutter campuses and focus on transitioning to remote education, one major concern for businesses is a potential disruption to the school purchasing season, which typically happens during the spring and summer, when officials set budgets for the upcoming school year. School budgets may well soon dip too, as they did following the last recession in 2008.

Read the full article about how coronavirus will impact edtech investments by Tony Wan at EdSurge.