The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.
A kid launches the app and chooses ‘maths, 7th grade.’ A mentor connects in a couple of seconds and helps the kid with an unclear assignment in today’s homework. After three minutes of conversation, a few pennies get deducted from mom’s credit card, but the child actually understood a complicated topic. Mechanics like this are used by startups in different countries – and, perhaps, that’s what should be called “Uber for school education.’
Paper, the Canadian startup of the day, brought to life the same service in the USA but with a different approach to monetization. Children work with the app without limitations, and the school pays for everything – it does want its pupils to study well, and the mentor is as much a part of the education process as the teacher in the classroom.
Aside from the improved academic performance, Paper also claims equalizing the results. In other words, well-off parents can help their child out themselves or hire a tutor, they have it good. As for the less well-off families, the new service will provide for a breakthrough.
Another difference about the B2B approach is that all the requests get recorded. The teacher knows what child asked for assistance with which topic, – and find a way to adjust according to this feedback. If everyone went to paper for assistance the day before, it means that the teacher didn’t explain the topic clear enough.
The startup brought in USD 390M of investment, almost all of it in the past two years. Before the pandemic, Paper was developing a-middling, but naturally, COVID helped it. Without home office, we would definitely not be talking about today’s valuation of USD 1.2B.
#canada #education #megaround #school
Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.
