Knowunity, a Berlin-based peer-to-peer learning app for secondary school students, has raised €9 million in its Series A extension round co-led by Stride and Redalpine with participation from existing investors Project A and Educapital, bringing its round total raised to €19 million after €10 million raise last year.
With the funds, Knowunity is looking to expand into the US. As per the company’s data, it has experienced strong growth in the last year, increasing its user base by 2m to 5.7m in the previous quarter of 2022 alone.
Co-founded by entrepreneurs, Benedict Kurz, Gregor Weber, Julian Prigl, and Lucas Hild, Knowunity provides a clean, vertically-focused mobile app that covers everything a student needs to have a great learning experience. It’s entirely peer-to-peer and enables students to create and publish their educational content to help learners better understand the course curriculum – all tailored to their country and in their language. Users upload their study notes and other resources to help fellow students grasp their school curricula and prepare for exams. The content on the platform spans everything from languages, science and mathematics to art and music. It is currently available in German, French, Spanish, English, Polish and Italian.
Students engage through direct messaging, and real support is provided via group learning and the power of the community. Through the platform’s creator tools, Knowunity allows students to build strong content, profiles, and followings that can be amplified both in-app and externally so they can boost their reach and generate a viral loop back to the product.
Speaking about the company, Co-founder of Knowunity Benedict Kurz, said:
We always felt that peer-to-peer content was way more helpful than most of the teachers’ content, as it was coming from an eye-to-eye, rather than a top-down, perspective. The platform has a built-in chat function allowing users to collaborate and offer group learning sessions. Catering to Gen Z, Knowunity also has creator tools allowing students to publish reels and videos, create profiles and build up personal followings. It might be the first digital learning app with influencers called “knowers”. The ones who upload the best and most popular content have up to 200k followers on the platform.
According to Kurz, the company will likely launch in Spain in April and expand to other continents at the end of 2023 or early 2024. It also plans to grow its headcount from 75 employees to 110-120 by the end of the year.
