Polish Social Learning Startup Brainly’s Path to 100M Users
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be in Poland on behalf of Silicon Valley Abroad, immersing myself into the local tech & entrepreneurship scene. In Kraków (Poland’s second largest city) I sat down with Jakub Piwnik, an early employee at Brainly, one of Poland’s biggest startup success stories, to learn about their journey from starting in 2009 to reaching 100M monthly active users last year. Here’s the podcast and interview transcript.
Charu: Welcome back to Silicon Valley abroad. I’m your host Charu and today I’m in Krakow, Poland with Kuba at Brainly, which is the world’s largest social learning platform. Kuba, thank you so much for being here with us. Can you tell me a little bit more about how Brainly started back in 2009?
Kuba: It all started with the cofounder and current CEO of Brainly. From his school years, he remembered how study groups really helped him with subjects where he was weak. The concept of Brainly was to bring these study groups online, and it very quickly became a huge success in Poland. Within a year of launch, we were able to reach 1M monthly active users in Poland.
Charu: What do you think that led to that adoption level in the first year?
Kuba: It showed that we had built a product solving a real problem for students. They struggle with their homework and parents can’t always help. Private tutoring is expensive and not an option for everyone. With Brainly, we solved this problem in a way that mimicked students natural real life behavior — asking their peers for help.
Charu: After launching in Poland, Brainly decided to launch in Russia next. What was the rationale behind that launch?
Kuba: We had proved that the Brainly concept worked in Poland, but wanted to test if it would work in other countries. Russia was a good option as it’s close culturally and geographically. It was also easy to find Russian speakers in Poland to help localize the product. Within a year of launch in Russia, we had 1M monthly active users there. It was the first step towards our global expansion. Today, we have over 100M monthly active users who come from over 35 countries. Our largest communities are in Indonesia, Russia, Poland, United States, Turkey and Latin America.
Charu: When you entered these international markets were there were local competitors you had to contend with?
Kuba: Yes, definitely. For example, in the US, our biggest competitor was Open Study which was a similar product founded by two university professors. We started talking about a potential collaboration but eventually ended up acquiring them. The students on Open Study joined the Brainly community.
Charu: In all of the markets you’re in, the Brainly product is translated into the local language. Do you have any product differentiation in the markets you’re in?
Kuba: The users in all markets are on the same Brainly product, but we keep the different language versions of Brainly separate. The main reason is the differences in what people are learning across different markets. We do test new features within specific markets so sometimes there are minor differences in the product from region to region. But the moment we see something work well regionally, we bring it to all the other markets and the product more or less looks the same.
Charu: Parents and teachers can also create accounts on Brainly, sometimes to help out as moderators. How does the dynamic of having parents and teachers in the same space as students work?
Kuba: We’ve always been students first, and we primarily want students to love Brainly. We do have some parents and teachers on the platform. Parents often help students with their homework, but often they can’t cover all the bases, so Brainly helps with that gap. Teachers are interested in joining Brainly as they want to understand what topics students are struggling with so they can better help them in the classroom. They also become moderators of our communities which helps keep content quality high as they make sure the answers are factually accurate.
Charu: Since Brainly is a social learning platform, there are also some game mechanics that come into play when students use it. Can you tell us more about that?
Kuba: Yes, students not only use Brainly to get help but they also have fun using our product. We have a lot of appreciation type features where students can get and give points. When you join Brainly, you receive some points and you can use them to ask questions. When you run out of points the only way to earn some more is to contribute and help other students. This really motivates students to engage and give back to the community. There are leaderboards and rankings for who has earned the most points based on the number and quality of the answers they give. A lot of the students become very competitive.
Charu: Switching gears a bit and talking of venture funding. The company was started in 2009 but looks like the first time you raised venture funding was in 2014?
Kuba: The company was started by capital from the founders and their friends. The seed round was in 2012 for about $500k. In 2014, we raised our Series A. So far we’ve raised $38.5M across multiple rounds.
Charu: What was the goal with each round?
Kuba: Yeah you could say that each one had slightly different goals. For the seed round, the goal was to grow the team here and launch mobile apps. Series A was focused on launching in US and opening our NYC office. Series B helped us expand the team, grow internationally and start preparing for monetization. Recently we’ve started testing paid subscription features in Poland and the US, and the early results are looking pretty good.
Charu: For a product like Brainly, are the students the paying customer or the parents?
Kuba: It’s both. As we build more paid features in the future we could have different subscription types for the two audiences but currently it’s the same.
Charu: Brainly started out here in Krakow and then expanded outside of Poland. What are some of the advantages and challenges of building a tech company in Poland?
Kuba: That’s a really good question. I think a great thing about starting a company in Poland, specifically Krakow, is that there’s a lot of talent here. We have some great universities and it’s easy to hire the young talent fresh out of university. Some might say it’s a challenge to hire senior talent here but we haven’t struggled with that issue. We have a lot of different nationalities working out of Krakow office and people have been very willing to move to Krakow.
Charu: Final question for you — what are some things upcoming startups in Poland can learn from Brainly’s success?
Kuba: Well I think what we did well was define the problem. We were very clear from the beginning on what the problem was and who we were solving it for. And we offered a simple and accessible solution that works around the world. We have 100M users today but there are more than 1billion students around the world so we’ve only scraped the surface. Our goal is to give every student in the world access to personalized learning.
Charu: That’s a great goal and I wish you every success. Thank you for your time Kuba!
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