A WhatsApp group to help with homework has turned into a billion-dollar business: the Vienna platform Go Student has collected 205 million euros from investors, including the Japanese group Softbank and the Chinese online giant Tencent. With a valuation of more than 1.4 billion euros, Go Student is Austria’s most valuable start-up.
The investors’ money is to be used to drive further expansion, including to Canada and Mexico. The start-up now has more than 500 employees at twelve locations worldwide. By the end of the year there should be 1,000 employees. More than 400,000 tutoring hours are booked via the platform every month.
The idea for Go Student 2015 came about: the math student Felix Ohswald developed a WhatsApp service for homework with his brother Moritz, who was still a schoolboy at the time. Business graduate Gregor Müller and electrical engineer Ferdinand von Hagen later joined as Go-Student co-founders as Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
According to the “Wirtschaftscompass”, Felix Ohswald last held 11.4 percent of GoStudent GmbH through his F95 private foundation, Gregor Müller’s G93 private foundation owned 10.6 percent before the current financing round. At the current total value of the company of 1.4 billion euros, the shares of Ohswald and Müller are each worth more than 140 million euros.
Second domestic unicorn
From a company valuation of more than one billion, one speaks of a “unicorn” in the start-up scene. Austria’s first unicorn is only three months old and practically still a foal itself: It is the Viennese crypto currency company Bitpanda, which achieved a valuation of more than one billion euros with an investment of 170 million euros. For comparison: Runtastic was worth 220 million euros when it was sold to Adidas.
Collected more money
Austria’s start-ups collected more money in 2020 despite the corona crisis. Investors put 234 million euros into the scene; in 2019 it was 218 million euros according to the “Startup Report 2020/21”.
The number of financing transactions rose by 18 percent. The number of transactions increased by three percent to more than 500,000 euros. “Overall, there were more deals, but on a smaller scale,” said Florian Kandler, editor of the report, at an online press conference. Financing was not noticeably interrupted by the outbreak of the corona crisis. In 2020, funding rounds were carried out every month.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
