Armenia/US-based Sololearn has raised $24M (€20.38M) in a Series B funding round. This was led by Drive Capital along with participation from previous investors in Sololearn’s $5.6M Series A in 2016, including Learn Capital and Prosus Ventures. The startup has raised a total of $30.8M, to date.
Columbus-based Drive Capital is a VC firm that started in 2013. It has raised over $1B to invest in startups solving problems in large markets. Drive is an investor in more than 50 companies outside of Silicon Valley, including Root Insurance, Duolingo, Greenlight, Olive, and Branch.
According to the World Economic Forum, new technology demands will require one billion workers to be “reskilled” by 2030, and 60 per cent of all new jobs will require technology skills.
Sololearn
Founded in Armenia by CEO Yeva Hyusyan in 2014, Sololearn offers instructional content, practice challenges, and community support, all within a gamified experience where users and community members can earn points that reflect their progress and contributions.
The startup claims that it has seen immense growth only by word of mouth alone. Currently, it has 21 million users with active users up 300 per cent, over the prior year, and it has doubled revenue over each of the last three quarters. Furthermore, Sololearn is adding as many as 300,000 users per month.
The most popular languages in Sololearn’s growing library of 25 curriculum categories are Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, HTML, and SQL.
Since its launch, Sololearn has expanded globally with offices across the United States and Europe and it has 75 employees as of June 2021 and expects to double headcount in the next 12 months.
Fund Utilisation
With the proceeds, the edtech startup plans to build out its content to new languages and technical skills, launch an enterprise learning management system to help companies train employees on specific development environments, and expand secondary and post-secondary education partnerships in which Sololearn complements classroom instruction.
“More than 1 billion people will require reskilling over the next decade, and people who don’t reskill will at best fall behind and at worst be out of a job,” says Hyusyan. “Sololearn empowers anyone who wants to improve professionally or personally by putting a coding school in the palm of their hand. We provide robust instructional content, engaging practice assignments, and inspiring community support from students and teachers.”
Sololearn rebranding
Earlier this month, Sololearn updated its brand, logo, and wordmark. “We kicked off the official rebranding process many months ago with a lot of research to learn what people think Sololearn represents. That research included talking to employees to understand their perceptions about Sololearn — our mission/vision, whom we aim to serve, and what people think Sololearn is meant to do,” mentions the company in a blog post.
“We are updating the Sololearn logo and wordmark to make it more identifiable and cutting edge. You will see that our new logo has changed to focus on four core colours, and has been simplified to four leaves rather than an entire wheel of several colours and petals.”
“Also, we updated the wordmark, lowercasing the second L so that it now reads “Sololearn” — it is now one word, rather than two words put together. Finally, we broadened and enriched the colour pallete of our brand, codifying the exact tones and shades for each colour that we will use across our app, website, and marketing communications like our emails, blog, and social media posts,” says the company.
