Mindstone raises £1.45 million in largest edtech crowdfunding campaign to date

Serial unicorn-picker Mattias Ljungman backs first post-exit venture from SuperAwesome founder Joshua Wohle 

2 December 2021, London – Mindstone, an edtech platform rethinking online education to help people learn faster and remember more, has raised £1.45 million through a crowdfunding campaign, making this the largest edtech crowdfunding campaign to date on Seedrs. Commitments to the campaign came from Moonfire Ventures founder Mattias Ljungman – who is backing the company to join Klarna, Viagogo, Peakon, and ClimateCorp as unicorns he funded at the earliest stages. The campaign also received investment from impact investment fund Mustard Seed Maze, Techstars managing director Eamonn Carey, US VC Scout Fund, Zanichelli Venture and Andrew Gault, founding partner of 7percent Ventures. 

Founded in 2020, Mindstone is the next venture from CEO Joshua Wohle following the acquisition of his previous startup – SuperAwesome, the biggest online child safety company in the world – by Epic Games earlier the same year. By rigorously employing the science of learning, Mindstone has built an edtech platform that allows experts from all walks of life to create engaging courses, built using the best pre-existing online articles, podcasts, and videos, helping people learn faster and remember more about a wide range of topics, from Astrophysics to Zoology. 

Speaking about his vision for Mindstone and the backing from leading investors in supporting the crowdfunding campaign, founder and CEO Joshua Wohle said: “Online education is broken. Providers and courses too often simply replicate traditional in-person teaching methods in an online environment, and are typically bound to static, one-size-fits-all curricula. We are rethinking online education from the ground up to solve this problem. The Internet is the greatest knowledge bank in human history, and our platform makes it as easy for anyone to build a course from existing high-quality online material as it is to curate a playlist on Spotify. Meanwhile, our compound learning approach – course content evolves based on questions and feedback from learners to continuously enhance the experience – puts learners themselves at the heart of everything, as they should be.

“To have investors of the calibre of Mattias and Eamonn come on board at this early stage is a huge vote of confidence in the importance of what we’re doing here and the ability of the team to deliver the impact we know will result if we succeed. We are also delighted to have impact investment fund Mustard Seed Maze are also supporting the campaign, who back businesses looking to create compelling societal and financial returns. Mindstone is all about democratising access to learning and teaching, so a crowdfunding campaign at this stage made perfect sense”

Mindstone already has several well-known organisations and individuals using the platform to create courses, including The Bitcoin Association (Bitcoin Basics), Landscape VC (How To Raise Funding For Your Startup), Flown (How To Do Deep Work) Radix (An Overview of Radix DLT), The Body Collective (Women’s Health: How To Live Your Best Life After 40) . In addition, several online influencers have contributed courses, including Jack Edwards, a lifestyle, travel, and literature blogger (How To Be A Better Reader), “studytuber” Unjaded Jade (How to Self Study), Vix Meldrew (How to Build Your Personal Brand on Instagram), and Eleanor Neale (How to Research a True Crime Case).

Mindstone has also recently signed a commercial partnership with one of the world’s most widely-respected publishers, Harvard Business Review (HBR). HBR will be one of the first media companies to work with Mindstone, combining the best of both platforms and allowing their users to learn faster and remember more.  Jim Bodor, Managing Director of Digital Product Strategy, HBR.org,said: “We are excited to see if Mindstone’s innovative tools add a new layer of functionality to HBR.org for our users.”

Mattias Ljungman, Founder and Managing Partner, Moonfire,said: “I am always on the hunt for the next category-creating disruptor, and when Joshua first described Mindstone to me, I knew I had to invest. He and the team at Mindstone have put the science of learning at the core of everything they do – creating a new way to approach education that is truly tailored to the individual learner. That rigor, combined with accessibility, could see Mindstone transform how we learn and manage knowledge on the scale that Wikipedia has done over the past two decades. I am excited to see this crowdfund affirm Mindstone’s potential and supercharge its mission to make learning better for everyone.” 

Eamonn Carey, Managing Director, Techstars,said: “Techstars started using Mindstone in early 2020, and we are delighted to have been able to support the company in its supercharged growth journey since. I have a strong belief in Mindstone’s mission and ethos, and that’s why I didn’t have to think twice before putting my own money where my mouth is and backing the company personally. The science underpinning the platform and the ambitious team are set to transform how we approach learning, and I’m excited to see what they achieve in the months and years ahead.”

Mindstone has raised £1.6 million to date, in a pre-seed round led by Ljungman’s Moonfire Ventures and including The Fund, Zanichelli Venture, Nex.D, and a number of angels, including Wohle’s former co-founders at SuperAwesome. Frank Visciniano, Former COO of Udemy, has also joined the company as an advisor. The platform is already available on desktop, iOS, and Android – the crowdfunding will support an increased focus on mobile, as well as further research and development, hiring, and commercial partnerships.