Thought Leaders in Online Education: Quizlet CEO Matthew Glotzbach (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Where is the scalable capacity to train large numbers of retail workers to become healthcare workers? That speaks to the kind of things that you’re talking about. If there were such a transition path with proper credentialing, that would be extremely valuable under the current circumstances. 

Matthew Glotzbach: Absolutely. We see that trend of what I might call reskilling or upskilling. We’re already seeing that trend on Quizlet. It’s something that will continue to accelerate.

There are a number of companies that are looking to provide some of that skill-based training. There’s massive opportunity around the actual collection, aggregation, and dissemination of those credentials.

There’s another broad trend in the space of education and learning. That’s what I’ll refer to as consumer learning, which is the individual really taking control and agency over their learning path and journey. That’s especially true in post-secondary. Definitely in the post secondary world, I see it becoming a much more consumer-directed learning experience. 

Sramana Mitra: Switching gears, let’s talk about how the company has been built. From what I understand, it was a bootstrapped company early on. You said it’s been around for 15 years. If you could just give me a bit of a walkthrough, that would be great. 

Matthew Glotzbach: It was founded around 15 years ago by Andrew Sutherland. He founded it when he was 15 years old as a high school sophomore. Like any great product, v1 was built to serve his own needs. He was taking a particularly challenging French class.

He was using the old traditional flash card method of index cards and a Sharpee. He knew enough computer science to say, “I think there’s a better way.” He built the first version for himself. He shared it with his friends. He continued working on the product while in high school.

He went to MIT to study computer science and continued it while he was there. He eventually decided to drop out of MIT and work on Quizlet full-time along with Dave Margulius who is a more experienced business person.

The company’s humble beginnings was really as a digital flashcard app. The company was bootstrapped. They had the wherewithal to implement some of the basic revenue models including advertising and what started out as donations that became subscriptions. They were profitable and self-funded over years.

In 2015 as they were starting to see success and user growth, they decided to raise a venture fund. They raised the Series A round in the fall of 2015. It was led by Union Square Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and Altos Ventures.

That’s when I was introduced to the company and joined as CEO. I’ve been here a little over four years now. Since that time, we’ve been taking a great product and scaling it to be a global business and a platform.

Sramana Mitra: You’ve only raised one round of funding?

Matthew Glotzbach: We’ve raised a couple of additional rounds. The Series A was in 2015. We raised a small Series B in early 2018. Then we just recently closed a Series C round in April where we raised another $30 million. That came at a billion-dollar valuation.

Sramana Mitra: You have how much in total funding?

Matthew Glotzbach: We have raised $62 million in total.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Quizlet CEO Matthew Glotzbach
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