107 Edtech startups mapped

Photography source: Jana Shnipelson on Unsplash

Exploring Edtech

Meet the 107 ventures shaping the space where education merges with state-of-the-art technology, paving the way for innovations that promise significant financial dividends and foster profound societal advancements. In this article, you will access a map of European ventures organised into categories, such as Education Providers and Education Management, and learn about the trends accelerating the growth of this space, such as nano learning.

In case you have missed it, EdTech, education technology, refers to solutions that leverage new technologies to deliver educational materials and experiences in a new or improved format. This is an industry expected to be worth $7 trillion by 2025. The combination of education with technology shows excellent opportunity in terms of financial return and the social impact that can be achieved.

While the excitement for innovative solutions targeting education has grown over the last decade, COVID-19 showed the need for creative solutions. The pandemic accelerated the need for solutions to facilitate remote and async learning and bring academic learning closer to at-home parental support. In fact, between 2019 and 2020, European venture capital investment in EdTech start-ups grew by 45%, with 2020 being a record year in terms of investments in the sector. As Brighteye Ventures reports, the European landscape showed greater resilience than other regions in the slowdown that began in Q1 of 2022, with a total investment for the year of €1.8 billion.

Mapping European Edtech

The mapping you will access below groups EdTech ventures into four main categories based on how each startup supports the user in their learning process, namely:

1. Education Providers — Ventures that offer learning content to their users. This can be done in various ways, split into sub-categories such as MOOC and Alternative Education.
2. Education Management — Ventures offering management systems, Learning Management Systems (LMS), AI solutions to streamline management and similar.
3. Coaching & Tutoring Marketplace— Ventures allows learners to meet tutors or trainers as a marketplace (C2C) or offer more structured learning and development programmes in a hybrid format coach/tutor and digital self-learn pathway.
4. Learning tools and resources — Ventures offer tools, financing, and other support content for learning.

You can access the full list here. Among the four categories above, EdTech solutions can vary greatly, as they can target different stakeholders. We followed the widely used division of pre-K, K-12, Higher Education, Corporate Learning, and Lifelong and Consumer learning to categorise stakeholders. Finally, we have added a sub-category field to help you get an idea of the specific focus of each company (i.e. Code learning, digital library, and workforce development).

There is a common assumption that EdTech solutions overlap with social impact concerning education. However, many solutions do not target underserved stakeholders, or their outcomes do not have significant scale or depth. While there is still much space in the market for solutions that include the stakeholders left behind by education, technology can broaden access to high-quality education, remove the burden from teachers and tutors, and enhance education with personalised experiences. For this reason, we have marked on the right column the ventures we felt have a stronger impact focus (get in touch with us if you think any changes are needed!).

Five trends shaping European education

Based on the mapping shared above, five trends emerged with the potential to accelerate the growth of the European education landscape.

• Nano-learning refers to delivering educational content in small, bite-sized learning modules that can be consumed quickly. This trend is crucial in EdTech because it allows for flexible and on-the-go learning, making education accessible to individuals with limited time. For example, this can potentially increase the chance for retraining and consumer learning. Furthermore, nano-learning platforms can address specific skill gaps and provide targeted learning experiences using AI. A whole sub-category could be found within Education Providers, which shows the relevance of this trend. For example, ventures like Edurino or GoodCourse offer brief and focused exercises and content to support children and employees in progressing in their learning.
• Alternative education refers to innovative approaches to learning that cater to marginalised groups and are focused on delivering employability outcomes. EdTech ventures focusing on alternative education aim to serve those usually missed by traditional education and provide opportunities for individuals from diverse backgrounds. Ventures like Coding Giants, which offers coding education for children, and Iconoclass, which provides hands-on training in business development and helps students secure jobs, are prime examples of ventures making a social impact by addressing the needs of underrepresented groups.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionise education by reducing the need for manual intervention, creating scalable solutions, and improving access to education. AI-powered tutoring platforms like sAInaptic provide affordable one-on-one tutoring opportunities to students who may not afford traditional tutors, increasing access to personalised, high-quality education. Additionally, AI can enhance accessibility by changing content formats that fit individual learning needs, as demonstrated by ventures like Anywyse (from text to audio solution).
• Adaptive assessments and personalised feedback play a crucial role in enhancing the learning process and addressing the shortage of teachers. EdTech ventures like Nurture focus on improving how feedback is given to students, providing personalised insights and recommendations to support their learning journeys. This enhances the academic experience, making sure no one is left behind. By leveraging technology, such ventures enable educators to provide tailored feedback and guidance, resulting in better learning outcomes.
• Data-driven education aims to tackle the shortage of special needs teachers and create personalised solutions for students with diverse learning needs. Ventures like GoLexic, which focuses on addressing dyslexia and other reading difficulties through innovative digital solutions, can solve the gap in traditional education. By leveraging data and technology, these ventures can provide personalised interventions, support individual learning styles, and empower students with disabilities to thrive in their educational journey.

Exciting prospects for the European ecosystem

Investing in EdTech ventures that align with these trends and keep in mind underserved target groups can achieve financial returns and make a significant social impact by advancing education, promoting accessibility, and addressing the needs of diverse learners. Some examples are unicorns like GoStudent (Austria) and Multiverse (UK).

This article was drafted as part of the research we have been conducting for our new investment vehicle, maze x. This research concluded that most EdTech investments occur in the UK, Germany, and Austria. Our investment vehicle will strengthen the ecosystem in Southern Europe while continuing to address the rest of Europe. We also understood that the European EdTech is dominated by larger rounds, lacking support for rounds below €1m. That is why we decided to go as early as possible, investing a ticket of €100k that includes a personalised three months of hands-on support so that we can kick-start early-stage entrepreneurs and lead them to stronger seed rounds. Finally, most investors focus on corporate learning solutions. However, it can be argued that the biggest educational outcomes will come from solutions tackling pre-schooling and school years (pre-k and k-12). For this reason, maze x will be laser-focused on early-stage ventures targeting underserved groups.

We are excited about the upcoming journey of investing early-stage in impact founders based in Europe. If you would like to share your view or recommend a venture that could benefit from the maze x programme, drop me an email at alice@maze-impact.com or get in touch via LinkedIn.

Sources

Attewell, J. (2023) Accelerating EdTech Start-ups in Europe, European Schoolnet, Brussels, Belgium

Brighteye Ventures (2023). The European EdTech Funding Report 2023.

Daley, Sam. “Edtech.” BuiltIn, 2022. https://builtin.com/edtech.

Holoniq (2022). 3 April 2022. https://www.weirdsciencelab.com/blog/2022/4/3/holoniq-research-predicts-that-education-will-be-a-7-trillion-dollar-industry-in-2025-and-10-trillion-in-2030-what-is-the-research-telling-us-about-the-tech-in-education