Skillshare, online learning community with thousands of classes and 5+ millions of members, and 10+ millions of website visits per month, founded in 2010, with about 500 employees and HQ in New York City, has enlarge their financial power with some $66m during new investment Round led by OMERS Growth Equity with participation of all existing investors - Union Square Ventures, Amasia, Burda Principal Investments, and Spero Ventures, totaling investments to almost $117m.
Unicorn Nest Dataset Insights
Skillshare decided to rebrand in early 2020 and started focusing mainly on the content of their platform and provision of more features and better usability. So no wonder that OGE joined the funding train as they are happy to invest in confident growth of companies, and Skillshare attracted another late stage investor to the gang. Considering the average exit period in USV (they used to exit after 7.5 years, and they invested into Skillshare at Round A in 2011), and BPI (growth capital arm of Hubert Burda Media) (they used to exit after 10 years, and they invested in Round C in 2018) this startup has all chances to become a unicorn within the next few years. Nevertheless, all of the investors of the round are interested in the growth and late-stage investments. It is clear that Amasia, BPI, and SV follow USV and used to join them the next round after initial investment. OGE has not yet demonstrated any syndication relation as this fund is only 1.5 years old. It may easily be predicted their further cooperation in the era of COVID-19. Moreover, CEO Matt Cooper of Skillshare admitted it was COVID reasoning to pitch distantly which led to reaching more investors, OGE being one of them.
Unicorn Nest Analyst Team Opinion
«This investment is compliant to the strategy of OGE to make long-term investments into companies with big growth capabilities and proven with the expertise of OGE partner Saar Pikar. The partnership of Skillshare and OGE will evidently bring new AI, Software, and App technologies to the startup considering OGE’s portfolio companies TouchBistro and Coveo».
