Funding Boost for Edtech Platform StudySmarter

A significant investment is fueling expansion for StudySmarter, a Munich-based company developing digital learning tools. The platform, which aims to be a “lifelong learning platform,” has secured $15 million in a Series A funding round.

Investment Details

The funding round was spearheaded by Owl Ventures, a venture capital fund specializing in the education sector. Left Lane Capital, based in New York, participated as a co-investor. Additional support came from Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, a former executive at WhatsApp, Uber, and Dropbox, and Dieter von Holtzbrinck Ventures (DvH Ventures), an existing early-stage investor.

Platform Features and User Base

Launched in 2018, StudySmarter has attracted over 1.5 million users. The user base is evenly divided between higher education students and K12 learners, with the majority currently located in German-speaking countries within Europe.

The platform leverages artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including natural language processing (NLP), to automate the creation of interactive, customized courses. It also tracks learner progress and generates personalized study plans that adapt over time.

Performance Claims

StudySmarter reports that 94% of its users experience improved grades as a result of utilizing the platform.

Scalability and Language Support

While NLP is typically more advanced for the English language, the startup asserts its models can be readily transferred to other languages without requiring additional training data. They claim their technology is “scalable in any language,” though acknowledge accuracy improves with increased user-generated content in a specific language.

How StudySmarter Works

Users input their learning objectives to receive recommendations for relevant revision materials available within the platform’s community. They can also contribute their own content, such as lecture slides and notes, to build custom courses.

StudySmarter’s platform transforms this source material into interactive study aids, including flashcards and practice exercises. The company emphasizes the convenience of consolidating all revision materials in one location, eliminating the need for multiple learning applications.

A Content Marketplace and Productivity Tool

StudySmarter functions as both a revision content marketplace and a learning productivity platform. It assists users in creating study plans and provides tools like a digital highlighter that automatically converts highlighted text into flashcards. These flashcards utilize spaced repetition learning to enhance content retention.

Users have the option to share their created content with the StudySmarter community or keep it private. Currently, 25% of users are content creators, and 80% of the content they produce is shared. The platform currently hosts over 25 million pieces of shared content.

Course Content Diversity

The platform is topic-agnostic, offering courses across a wide range of subjects. Popular courses include Economics, Medicine, Law, Computer Science, Engineering, and core school subjects like Maths, Physics, Biology, and English.

AI-Powered Recommendations

The platform employs AI to suggest relevant revision content, topics, and study groups, continuously supporting and extending the learning process with adaptive recommendations.

“The ease of creating learning materials on the StudySmarter platform results in a democratization of high-quality educational content, driven by learners themselves,” the company states.

Verified Content and UGC

In addition to user-generated content (UGC), StudySmarter hosts materials from verified educators and publishers. Users can choose to search exclusively for verified content if they prefer.

“In general, there is no single workflow,” explains co-founder and CMO Maurice Khudhir. “We created StudySmarter to adapt to different learner types. Some are very active learners and prefer to create content, some only want to search and consume content from other peers/publishers.”

Platform Philosophy

“Our platform focuses on the art of learning itself, rather than being bound by topics, sectors, industries or content types. This means that anyone, regardless of what they’re learning, can use StudySmarter to improve how they learn. We started in higher education as it was the closest, most relevant market to where we were at the time of launch. We more recently expanded to K12, and are currently running our first corporate learning pilot.”

Gamification and Engagement

Gamification is a key element of the platform, encouraging engagement through positive reinforcement, emoji, badges, and achievements based on individual progress. This approach is similar to microlearning platforms like Duolingo, but allows users to select their subject matter and contribute their own materials.

Inspired by Tech Leaders

StudySmarter draws inspiration from companies like Netflix and Tinder. It incorporates recommendation algorithms similar to Netflix’s “watch next” suggestions and utilizes a Tinder-style swipe interface for its “smart flashcards,” adapting to user responses.

“Firstly, we individualise the learning experience by recommending appropriate content to the learner, depending on their demographics, demands and study goals,” explains Khudhir. “For instance, when an economics student uploads a PDF on the topic of marginal cost, StudySmarter will recommend several user-generated courses that cover marginal cost and/or several flashcards on marginal cost as well as e-books on StudySmarter that cover this topic.

“In this way, StudySmarter is similar to Netflix — Netflix will suggest similar TV shows and films depending on what you’ve already watched and StudySmarter will recommend different learning materials depending on the types of content and topics you interact with.

“As well, depending on how the student likes to learn, we also individualise the learning journey through things such as the smart flashcard learning algorithm. This is based on spaced repetition. For example, if a student is testing themselves on microeconomics, the flashcard set will go through different questions and responses and the student can swipe through the flashcards, in a similar way to Tinder. The flashcards’ sequence will adapt after every response.

“The notifications are also personalised — so they will remind the student to learn at particular points in the day, adapted to how the student uses the app.”

Additional Features

The platform includes a scan function utilizing OCR (optical character recognition) technology, allowing users to upload notes, handouts, or books. A sketch feature enables further edits and annotations.

This scanned content can then be used to create digital learning materials, extending the utility of the original source.

“A significant cohort of users access StudySmarter on tablets, and they find this learning flow very useful, especially for our school-age pupils,” Khudhir adds.

Analytics and Future Goals

StudySmarter provides educators and publishers with detailed learning analytics. The company’s overarching goal is to become “the leading marketplace for educational content” by leveraging user learning goals to recommend relevant professional content, establishing itself as an effective distribution platform.

The platform is currently used by students, teachers, professors, trainers, and corporate members to create and share content, with a noticeable increase in usage from teachers during the European school closures in March of the previous year.

Copyright Protection

To minimize copyright risks, StudySmarter employs a three-layered system. Professional content hosted on the platform cannot be shared or exported. Uploaded documents and comments can be shared within a private learning group at a single university or class. Only UGC, such as flashcards, summaries, and exercises, can be freely shared with the entire StudySmarter community with the user’s consent.

“It’s important to note that no content is shared without the author’s permission,” Khudhir notes. “We also have a contact email for people to raise potential copyright infringements. Thanks to this system, we can say that we never had a single copyright issue with universities, professors or publishers.”

Content Quality Control

To address potential quality issues with UGC, StudySmarter tracks learner engagement with shared content to create quality scores. Factors considered include usage frequency, accuracy of answers, and average learning time. An active feedback system from students is also utilized.

“We combine this with an active feedback system from the students to assign each piece of content a dynamic quality score. The higher the score is, the more often it is shown to new users. If the score falls below a certain threshold, the content is removed and is only visible to the original creator,” he goes on, adding: “We track the quality of shared content on the creator level so users who consistently share low-quality content can be banned from sharing more content on the platform.”

Monetization Strategy

While monetization is not currently a primary focus, StudySmarter is exploring B2B revenue streams, such as partnerships with employers to promote graduate programs or recruitment drives. The company primarily utilizes revenue-sharing agreements with verified educators and publishers.

“We are very happy to say that the vast majority of our content is not created or shared on StudySmarter for any financial incentive but rather because our platform and technology simply make the creation significantly easier,” says Khudir, adding: “We have not paid a single euro to any user on StudySmarter to create content and do not intend to do so going forward.”

Future Expansion

The new funding will be allocated to product development and global expansion. Successful pilot programs in the U.K. and U.S. have identified these markets as primary expansion targets by Q3 of this year. Brazil, India, and Indonesia are also key targets, along with France, the Nordic countries, Spain, and Russia.

“We’ve run successful pilots in the U.K. and U.S. so they’re our primary focus to expand to by Q3 this year. In fact, following a test pilot in the U.K. in December, we became the number one education app within 24 hours (ahead of the likes of Duolingo, Quizlet, Kahoot and Photomath), which bodes well!” he goes on.

“Due to the fact our platform is content-agnostic, and the technology that underpins it is universal, we’re able to scale effectively in multiple countries and languages. Within the next 12 months, we will be expanding to more than 12 countries and support millions of learners globally.”

Competitive Advantage

StudySmarter differentiates itself from competitors by offering a comprehensive, all-in-one platform, unlike “single-feature apps” that focus on specific learning areas.

StudySmarter names the likes of Course Hero, StuDocu, Quizlet and Anki as taking a similar broad approach — while simultaneously claiming they’re not doing it in “quite the same, holistic, end-to-end, all-in-one bespoke platform for learners” way.

However, the company acknowledges that diverse learning approaches are valuable and can coexist. To succeed in its global expansion, StudySmarter will need to effectively localize its platform and capture the attention of students beyond its European base.