Business Development

Varsity Tutors Lands $50 Million in Series C Funding

Release courtesy of Varsity Tutors

The Company Has Now Received $107 Million in Total Funding

Varsity Tutors, a Clayton-based learning company that is fundamentally changing how individuals acquire knowledge, has closed a $50 million Series C funding round.  The latest announcement brings its total funding to $107 million.  The round was led by Learn Capital, with participation from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and existing investor Technology Crossover Ventures.

“It’s a thrill and privilege to have this opportunity to support Varsity Tutors at this moment in the company’s trajectory,” Learn Capital Managing Partner Rob Hutter said.  “It’s our view that global market forces are converging to create a new era of augmented learning where profoundly new rules and growth dynamics will take hold.  Varsity Tutors is one of the best positioned companies on the planet to build a leadership franchise that quickly out-distances the crowd and transforms the possibility space of personalized instruction.”

Varsity Tutors has logged more than 3,000,000 hours of live one-on-one tutoring since its inception in 2007, with more than 40,000 experts on the platform, across 1,000 subjects.  Experts are available to meet in person or through the company’s award-winning online and mobile platforms, which account for the majority of all sessions.

Varsity Tutors plans to increase those numbers substantially as it targets new verticals outside of tutoring and new international markets.  It also intends to focus on new product innovation, including expansion of its Instant Tutoring product, which allows learners to connect with live experts in as little as 15 seconds in nearly 150 subjects.

“We are excited to invest in Varsity Tutors given their leadership and success to date, and their continued innovation to offer quality learning experiences to more students across different geographies, backgrounds and learning needs,” Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Managing Partner Vivian Wu said.  “We look forward to working with them to make students’ learning even more effective and to increase access for more students.”

To date, more than 100,000 students have relied on online, mobile and in-person live instruction to meet their personal and professional goals.

In 2017, Varsity Tutors acquired First Tutors, the largest tutoring marketplace in Europe.  It has also acquired four educational content websites to introduce Varsity Tutors to millions of new users.

“For the first time in history, advances in technology have allowed us to create a platform that provides instant access to the expertise you need in real time,” Varsity Tutors Founder & CEO Chuck Cohn said.  “Learners using Varsity Tutors are now benefiting from a far better experience online than has ever been possible offline.  By building the leading platform that enables individuals to find personalized instruction in any subject, anywhere, anytime, we are redefining learning.”

The company was founded by Cohn during his undergraduate days at Washington University in St. Louis.