.png)
In 2021, the Austrian company “Go Student” became the world’s very first European EdTechunicorn, meaning that the startup reached a valuation of over $1 billion. Currently valued at€3 billion, GoStudent, a startup focusing on private tutoring for K12 students, is clearly aforce to be reckoned with. But, how did their valuation increase so rapidly? Why didGoStudent become the mighty EdTech giant it is today? And, most importantly, what canwe learn from their success?
GoStudent is a private tutoring company which provides online tutoring for K12 students. Tutorsare always vetted by the company before they join the platform to ensure a high quality service.Students are then offered a practice lesson and parents are able to interview individual tutors toensure a successful match between tutor and student. Currently, the company offers classes inabout 30 different subjects and has over 15,000 tutors, with more than 1.5 million tutoringsessions booked per month.
The company was founded in 2016 in Vienna by CEO Felix Ohswald and his chief operatingofficer, Gregor Müller. The company started as a platform where students could find answers todifficult questions, as it was a free homework-chat via WhatsApp. However, after the first angelinvestment, this concept was then scaled up into a company app which included a homeworkchat, which by 2017 had 100,000 users, leading to a €500,000 investment in the startup. Theconcept at this point was very different from the one the brand is tied to today, as it was a a “chatapp” rather than a private tutoring platform.
In 2018, the business model was altered, as paid tutoring sessions became available onlinethrough the platform. At this point, the company had established a user base of over half a millionstudents, as well as receiving a seed fund of €1.4 million. Yet, the company drastically changedtheir business model once again in 2019, introducing the notion of a paid membership to theirtutoring platform, memberships that could last between 6 and 36 months, a smart way ofstrengthening the company’s relationship with its customers and driving growth.
However, the company's truly rapid growth began in 2020, with €13.3 million received ininvestment, leading them to hire 75% more employees and ending the year with over 150,000booked tutoring sessions per month. By 2021, GoStudent became the world’s very first EuropeanEdTech unicorn, having raised a Series C round of €205 million and reached €1.4 billion invaluation, establishing its place as the world’s very first European EdTech unicorn. However, thismilestone may have been facilitated by the fact that, in 2021, European EdTech VC investmenttripled, increasing from about $785 million in 2020 to $2.50 billion in 2021. It is quite likely that thisexplosive increase was triggered by the pandemic, as Covid 19 shone a light on the vitalimportance of the EdTech industry. Interestingly, Ohswald claimed that the pandemic was not themain factor causing the company’s substantial growth, stating to TechCrunch that the pandemicmeant that “with schools closed, there was less pressure, less exams, less demand for after-school study.”
Whether or not the pandemic did help the company, what is clear is that GoStudent changed theirbusiness model substantially since the startup launched, showing that they were able to adapt towhat they saw was successful, rather than insisting upon their initial concept. The company’sdynamic approach to their business model, which arguably could be labelled as trial and error, isclearly one that put them at the forefront of the EdTech industry.
.png)
