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Maven: a16z
bets millions on online learning
How two EdTech vets raised millions from Tier 1 VCs and major angel investors.
Maven: building the university of the future
Maven empowers the world’s experts to offer cohort-based courses directly to their audience. Since launching in January 2021, instructors have already sold over $1 million worth of courses on their platform. Maven’s founders are no strangers to online learning.
Data as of 12/31/21
Choosing community funding
Maven could have easily raised from VCs, but that didn’t align with their core values that center around building communities and challenging the status quo. This is one of the reasons they decided to raise on Republic, where everyday investors were able to participate alongside major VCs.
Founders with experience
Wes Kao
Gagan Biyani
479 investors backed the future of education
Maven’s Reg CF campaign on Republic set a minimum investment amount of only $100, but that didn’t stop investors from pouring in an average of ~$1,500. In less than a month, Maven was successfully funded.
Previous to the campaign, Maven had already raised over $4M in seed financing, led by Tier 1 venture capital firm First Round Capital. Other investors included Naval Ravikant, Sahil Lavingia, Li Jin, Arlan Hamilton and co-founders from Lambda School, Outschool, Superhuman, and Udemy.
Founders Wes Kao and Gagan Biyani, believed in a community first model that centered around bringing their early investors in to become more than just fans— to become investors.
In addition to the experience the notable traditional venture capitalists brought in from investing in companies like Uber, Robinhood, Notion, Twitter, Postmates, and more, Maven now had a community of educators, students,
Reviews on Republic
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Najva Sol
As someone who's attended, taught in, and designed cohort-based experiences, I'm personally aware of the way we're hacking solutions together. A proper platform will hopefully let creators + educators focus on quality content rather than building the container for the classes. Can't wait for this to exist.
Tara Gilboa
I invested in Wes and Gagan because I believe the future of learning should be driven by relationships that catalyze growth. Wes' deep understanding of culture and community can bring about the scalable, sustainable, more authentic experiences we want for a new decade of global societies of leaners. LMSes (learning management systems) and CMSes (Community Management Systems) will be part of our past, and these two will create our future.
Yash Tekriwal
As a cohort-based course creator myself and a founder in this space – Wes and Gagan are tackling a massive problem and bringing a wealth of experience to the table.
Raising additional capital from a16z
Just three months after their campaign on Republic, Maven went on to raise $20 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz — a leading venture capital firm with ~$19 billion in assets under management.
Andreessen Horowitz has also invested in some of the biggest companies in the world including Coinbase, Lyft, AirBnB, Stripe, and Robinhood to name a few.
The round places a16z general partner Andrew Chen on Maven’s board. Here’s what he had to say about Maven:
The Wrap
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