StudySmarter Continues to Succeed after The EdTechX Global Startup Super Leagues
As EdTechX prepares for the second Global Startup Super League at EdTechX 2020, we spoke with Maurice Kudhir, Founder of 2019 winner StudySmarter, about what the success of winning the Super League meant for him.
Overall, StudySmarter saw growth in both team and reach and at an overwhelming amount in the months preceding EdTechX. No longer focused on only higher education, Maurice saw his team grow by 60%, new target groups and user growth as well as reached new financing rounds since being crowned the 2019 winner.
StudySmarter’s user base grew from around 100k users to 450k within a couple of months since the Global Startup Super League. They have also fostered partnerships with leading publishers, including Pearson. By working with Pearson, StudySmarter were able to move into a new vertical, the K12 market, and launch StudySmarter for School.
Currently, they are in the last steps of their Seed financing round raising a seven-digit amount (value not disclosed). With this, they are becoming one of the largest learning platforms in the DACH region. Moreover, with their expanding focus on the transition between school and university to create a seamless learning journey. With the Pearson/STARK cooperation, entering the K12 market, StudySmarter now aims to grow even further and attract more talent — something Maurice mentioned is currently also one of their biggest challenges.
With regards to the project with Pearson, StudySmarter hopes to use its strengths as a content-agnostic learning platform combined with the broad range of content STARK provides to create an intelligent and holistic learning experience
“On the one hand, you have the possibility to upload your own content and benefit from our digital learning tools to process and learn in a gamified and efficient way. On the other hand, we want to be able to reduce the time-to-benefit for every single user by providing high-quality and tailored content through individual recommendations” — Maurice Kudhir
Another area of focus yet to focus on is within corporate learning, with StudySmarter eventually being established as a content-agnostic platform for lifelong learning. At the moment, they are focusing on Higher Education and K12, however, not learning corporate learning untouched and recently create a pilot with a German insurance company.
“Learning does not stop after university and lifelong learning is becoming more and more important. Thus, we are convinced that every learner can profit from StudySmarter, no matter if it’s a 15-year-old high school student or a 60 y.o. Insurance agent and an insurance policy is probably even less fun to learn.”
With the increase of EdTech companies entering the market, StudySmarter’s biggest competitor still and likely always will remain to be the traditional learning mindset. The majority of students within higher education are still convinced that the best way to learn and understand is through pen and paper. Typically, students summarise their lectures or write flashcards by hand. With StudySmarter, they intentionally do not automate every learning process rather offer tools to accelerate the “low-mental-effort” process, mimicking the mental effort of learning by hand.
The DACH region has been the best place for StudySmarter to launch and grow. This is particularly because of the pre-existing education infrastructure bring one of the best in the world. Institutions focus on content and research, however, are mostly too far away from the actual “user-learning-experience”. The latter provides space for intelligent learning apps such as StudySmarter to step in and close the gap.
Soon StudySmarter plans to expand to English-speaking interest; one of the reasons why the app was developed “Engligh-First”; and have pilots planned for UK and USA.
Maurice will be at EdTechX 2020 introducing the Global Startup Super League as we look for the next best EdTech Startup. If you are interested in taking part you can find out more about our European Ecosystem Events here.
Follow StudySmarter and Maurice on Twitter and LinkedIn to find out more about what they have next in store!
