A Durham company with its roots at Duke University is combining with a Canadian outfit to form a business focused on health care education.
This week, Durham's DaVinci Education announced its "strategic merger" with Elentra, a portfolio company under investment firm Achieve Partners. The software companies will form a combined entity led by new CEO JD White.
Financial details of the deal were not released. But DaVinci Education CEO and co-founder Allison Wood said it is not a buyout, although the combined company will be part of Achieve Partners' portfolio.
“There's a lot of energy, effort and expense that goes into competing in the marketplace,” Wood said. “We're basically doing the same thing, so we said why don't we come together and create something that's greater than the sum of our parts?”
DaVinci offers a platform called Leo – “the premier enterprise software platform designed for the complex needs of health care education.” Elentra offers a platform that allows educators to digitize their curriculum.
Once merged, the combined entity will take on the corporate name Elentra. However, Wood emphasized that the DaVinci brand will not disappear.
DaVinci employs around 20 people and there are no plans to lay off any workers.
“This is about coming together to grow,” Wood said. “And not to just cut costs.”
The company’s office is in Downtown Durham at 201 W. Main St. It is unclear whether the business will maintain a Triangle location after merging with Elentra, which is based in Ontario.
Achieve Partners is a private equity firm in New York. According to Wood, this is the first time DaVinci Education has been financed by institutional investors.
Wood declined to share revenue figures for DaVinci Education.
Launched in 2011 out of the Duke School of Medicine, the startup DaVinci Education was originally known as LCMS+. Co-founder David Weiner was working on a software program at Duke that he believed possessed global potential.
“We looked at each other one day and said this is a piece of software that could benefit not just Duke School of Medicine, but all schools of medicine,” Wood said.
A local angel investor focused on health care education took an interest in the software and helped get the couple’s idea off the ground.
In 2019, the startup evolved into DaVinci Education. It was around this time that Wood and Weiner’s personal relationship dissolved and Weiner took his leave from the company.
Wood stayed on, and she will continue to stay involved in the company’s activities even as White takes the helm as CEO of Elentra.
White steps into this leadership position after four years as CPO for Anthology, a global education technology company. This corporation was also formed by a merger, which combined four major education technology companies: Blackboard, Campus Labs, Campus Management and iModules.
In a statement to TBJ, White said, "We are focused on supporting our clients during this merger and that is our main focus at the moment.
" ... For me, the opportunity to impact education has always been a passion and focus of my career. This role continues to feed that passion as I get to work with people and institutions who are passionate about advancing health care education and the importance that health care professionals have on our societies and communities," White said.
In a press release about the merger, White said the vision is to create "the first purpose-built ecosystem for health care education, by health care educators, to help programs anticipate concerns and adapt experiences to shape a learner’s trajectory — a next-generation guidance system to support health care education’s specialized outcomes.”
There is currently no set date for when DaVinci Education will officially merge with Elentra. The merger has been in the works for a few months, and the companies are still determining the final details.
“I could not be more excited about the opportunity in front of us to reinvent,” said Wood. “And to reach a much bigger audience with much deeper impact.”