LearnWeb3 raises $1.25M seed round to help onboard developers into web3
Beginnings
Nine months ago when we started LearnWeb3, resources and education in Web3 were fragmented — and we wanted to change that. Our idea was simple: Provide free, high quality education to students of web3.
We wanted to become the one-stop shop for all aspiring web3 developers. And thus, our slogan was born:
Join us and become a web3 developer.
That simple idea is what created a community of over 50,000 developers. All learning web3, building cool shit, and making new friends. Before we knew it, our students were winning hackathons. Getting hired at top tier web3 companies like Polygon, Coinbase, and Alchemy. We were graduating roughly 300 people a month, and that’s when we knew we had something special on our hands.
At this time, we were basically roughhousing. Quizzes for levels happened on Google Forms. Graduation NFT certificates were a highly manual process. Our infrastructure was crashing regularly! Spending time on our day jobs and managing expectations for the community at the same time was becoming highly challenging. We knew we had something exciting on our hands, and needed this to be sustainable.
Turns out, we weren’t the only ones to see this potential. With the help of BuildersTribe, we got in touch with IOSG Ventures, a first-check crypto fund, investing in Web3, and they took an interest in us right away. Three months later, they decided to invest one million dollars into the project. Other incredible angels, such as Balaji Srinivasan and Harsh Rajat (founder of EPNS), and a few anonymous angels also jumped on board. Before we knew it, we had closed a seed round.
The above paragraph is a huge under-exaggeration of the process that went into making that happen. Since we were raising during the peak of the crypto bear market 2022, times were tough. The whole process took a lot of hard work, sleepless nights, rollercoaster emotions, but an optimistic vision for the future.
In the meantime, our students were continuing to excel. They ran workshops, pair programming sessions, Twitter spaces. The demand for content was outstripping the supply, and we knew we had to figure out ways to scale it. We’ve taken our first step towards this now by opening up job positions at LearnWeb3 (If you’re someone who wants to work with us, check out our job postings on AngelList)
Vision
We see the problem of empowering developers to be one of the biggest problems in the space today. The next few years will be crucial and defining of what the space will look like in the future.
Over the years, we have seen a shift in education from traditional classroom and university based locations to being more online. With examples like: MOOC’s Coursera and Udemy, Cohort-based Courses like Maven, interactive learning like Codecademy, and increasingly accessible tooling like Repl.it have made it easier than ever for students to take their first step into the world of programming.
On the other side, the rise of remote work, online communication, and freelance work have enabled new ways for developers to engage with opportunities that were not easily possible before.
Keeping all of this in mind though, education is not the sexiest tech industry. It’s not something people would regularly want more of. It’s often times not the most exciting way to spend your time, and we understand that.
At LearnWeb3, we believe accessibility of resources and opportunities is a key problem to focus on in the early stage, however engaging students, building a curious mindset, and imbibing the values of great learners in them is a bigger, yet often times looked over, challenge that needs to be tackled the right way.
As we progress in the future, our vision is to solve these challenges and problems the best we can. Undoubtedly, it’s going to require a lot of experimentation, a lot of failures, and hopefully some successes along the way. But hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
We firmly believe everything that has happened so far is just a scratch on the surface. There is a long way to go to improve the space and enable millions of more developers. But we, along with our supporters, are highly optimistic, and we are honoured to have the opportunity to impact so many lives.
Values
LearnWeb3 sticks by a few core values that have existed since day one. We continue to stick to these values to ensure the best experience possible. These core values are:
1. Resources MUST be free for all students
2. Resources must be of high quality and comprehensive
3. Resources and opportunities must be made accessible
4. Foster a helpful, friendly community where we can uplift each other
Goal
When we started building in the education space nine months ago, we held the opinion that most alternatives out there were either training already seasoned developers, charging too much, or only doing very introductory tutorials.
None of the aforementioned approaches worked for us and our vision of what we wanted to do. Our main goal, since day one, has been to provide students with the resources and opportunities they need to enter the Web3 space as a professional developer, regardless of background, context, or financial situation. Come with a willingness to learn, become a web3 developer.
Rewarding Contributors
Watching the community grow from 0 to over 50,000 developers has been one of the best experiences of our life, and this could not have happened without ALL of our contributors. Following this announcement, we have some things we’re doing to reward our contributors who have been with us on this journey:
Contributor NFTs
All LearnWeb3 Contributors from Bronze to Diamond will be receiving special, hand drawn NFTs. These come with special perks, and will play important roles when we fully transition to an on-chain DAO.
LearnWeb3 Swag
Individuals with the role of Silver Contributor and above will be getting free LearnWeb3 merch and swag delivered to them.
TA Internships
Those with the role Gold Contributor and above will be eligible to apply for a Teaching Assistant Internship role where they can continue doing what they do best.
Moving Forward
We have a lot of ideas in mind on how to progress, a lot of ways to make the experience more exciting and unique for the students, various experiments we will be running to make learning simpler, and efforts being made to reduce the gap between the platform and the community.
Everyone who has been with us so far, you were early. Expect that to be recognized through OG NFTs (coming soon). The future holds some very exciting upgrades to the LearnWeb3 platform.
Thank you to all of our community, and our backers, who have helped us along the way. WAGMI.
