EdTechX Awards Spotlight: GoStudent
GoStudent received the 2022 EdTechX Scale-Up Award which recognises education or training companies for innovation and growth momentum. To be eligible for consideration in this award category, applicants must have an annual revenue above €10M.
We spoke with GoStudent’s Chief Growth Officer, Laura Warnier to learn more about the company, lessons she has learned, what advice she’d share with EdTech entrepreneurs and more.
What was the inspiration behind starting GoStudent?
First conceived in 2015 by Felix Ohswald, the company started out as a homework chat service, managed via WhatsApp. Felix quickly became the go-to expert for his younger brother Moritz’s classmates, who would regularly text him when struggling with their maths homework.
There appeared to be a distinct lack of support for these students, so Felix resolved to find a solution to a fundamental and global problem: access to top teachers. It was with this mission in mind that Felix reached out to his friend Gregor Müller, GoStudent’s Co-Founder and COO, and proposed that together they build a dedicated homework support app, where users could be connected with motivated and inspiring tutors and would receive high-quality support. GoStudent was subsequently founded in 2016, with the app launching that summer.
Although the company’s mission never changed, the business model has. As of 2019, GoStudent has offered 1:1, affordable online tutoring via a subscription model. Working together with 20,000 self-employed tutors, 1.5M tutoring sessions per month are being booked.
What would you like everyone to know about GoStudent?
One of the biggest misconceptions people have about tutoring is that it is mainly used when children are facing difficulties at school. At GoStudent, we think long-term, and we are convinced that tutoring can benefit every child: whether they have difficulties in a subject, they want additional lessons, or in order to excel in a subject they are already good at.
Another misconception is about pricing. But, as in many other areas, digitalisation in the education sector will lead to educational services becoming more easily and affordably accessible. Through technological innovation in education, personalised online learning services can not only be offered at a lower cost but can also be made available in geographical areas where such tutoring services are difficult to access.
Using digitisation, we aim to solve the difficulties in accessing quality education for students worldwide.
What does winning the EdTechX Scale-Up Award mean to you and your business?
We feel extremely proud to have won this award. It’s a great achievement and validation that the work of our talented, global team is being seen and understood.
The past two years have seen GoStudent enter hyper growth mode: we have now expanded to +20 markets, and this has taken place in a small amount of time. We have transitioned from start-up to scale-up without truly realising this shift, so this award really puts into perspective how far we have come in such a short time. We are so excited to be on this new stage of development as a business, and the EdTechX award is a great way to mark that milestone.
Looking back to the day you started, what would you have done differently?
In 2019, the majority of our time was spent on building a sales force to convince parents that online was as effective as in-person tutoring. The marketing team had been kept to the minimum. And all German speakers. When our expansion exploded, we faced another challenge: the cost of acquisition! Sales processes were easily replicable, but marketing needed to be localised. So, we had to hire, fast, to bring in the expertise! However, international marketing talents are not so easy to find in Austria. So, we opened a marketing hub in Berlin, but then faced another difficulty: often candidates were tied up in long notice periods, up to 6 months, and the fight for talent was on.
It was very important for us not to sacrifice expertise and culture fit to speed but, at the same time, we had numbers to deliver. So here, we pulled out one of our main values “Be fast or be last”. Despite those difficulties, we ended up hiring 60 marketing specialists in just six months.
If I could turn back time, I’d have pre-empted this need and prioritised finding these talents well ahead of their markets opening, so that, when the time came, they were onboarded and ready and we were not playing catch up.
What piece of advice would you give to other entrepreneurs working in the EdTech space?
Regardless of industry, my best advice would be to trust your team and their expertise. As a leader, you need to hire people who have more experience than you in a certain domain and who you feel can do the job better than you would do it. When you make these hires, give them the freedom to operate in the way that suits them best, and trust that they will drive results. That said, you should always be there when they need you or your advice, and don’t forget to proactively check on the status of their projects. My team knows that my door is always open. They know that I am here to support and guide them when needed, because we are in this together.
What’s the one thing about EdTech you wish was discussed more?
How the public system can be incentivised to adopt EdTech initiatives. If we want to change the way we educate the new generation, the private and public sector need to start working together in a more efficient way. To have a significant impact, we must do more than solely convince students and parents, we need to convince the government too and enable schools to easily adopt innovation. Schools need the freedom and chance to offer a more digital, personalised and interactive way of education, so it would better fit the need of the new generation.
Can you share one prediction around the future of learning?
Each new generation of teachers is more digitally-savvy than the last. As such, I believe that technology, AI and the metaverse will be more and more a part of how students learn, and how teachers can offer a more personalised and interactive classroom experience. But for this to happen, we need to leave room for teachers to experiment more.
What do the next 5–10 years look like for GoStudent and what impact do you see it having on the future of learning?
Our mission since day one has been to unlock the full potential of every child. That mission won’t change. Our goal is to become THE global tutoring partner for families all around the world. To achieve this, we want to keep finding new ways to bring innovation to the field of education.
We believe that AI and the metaverse will be more and more important to the future of education, so GoStudent will plan to be active in this space while continuing to explore acquisition and partnership opportunities that will help us to build a holistic learning ecosystem.
Laura Warnier is Chief Growth Officer at the online tutoring platform GoStudent, recently valued at €3B. Laura joined GoStudent in 2018, as the company’s second full-time employee, to develop the commercial strategy. In 2020, Laura started GoStudent’s international expansion. She launched the French market and created a playbook that enabled the scaleup to further expand to 15+ countries within a year. Currently, Laura is responsible for the entire branding and marketing team. GoStudent is currently active in +20 markets and employs +2,000 talents.
Find out more about the 2022 EdTechX Award winners and finalists here…
