Building a European EdTech Unicorn from Vienna, Austria: Felix Ohswald, CEO of GoStudent (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: For those three years, you ran this site of letting students ask questions and answering those questions?

Felix Ohswald: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Was there financing involved?

Felix Ohswald: Yes, we raised about €3 million.

Sramana Mitra: From whom?

From Developer to Solo Entrepreneur to $5M+ Revenue: Sporcle Founder and CTO Matt Ramme (Part 3)

Matt Ramme: Another big interest was puzzles and watching Jeopardy. I’ve always been a fan of that. As I got into that, my wife and I would play a lot of crosswords. What I kept finding is that the more I do it, the more I realize there’s a certain subset of trivia data that, if you know, you can get farther into it.

For example, knowing all the states and state capitals, knowing the presidents, and knowing all these lists of data that are well-known. During this time, I was trying to learn more myself. By learning it myself, I was using pieces of paper as flashcards. At that point, I’m like, “It seems like there’s a better way to do this.”

Building a European EdTech Unicorn from Vienna, Austria: Felix Ohswald, CEO of GoStudent (Part 1)

This is a terrific story of a European EdTech venture that has raised $600 million and is scaling extremely well after three years of not finding a monetization model.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

From Developer to Solo Entrepreneur to $5M+ Revenue: Sporcle Founder and CTO Matt Ramme (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the thesis of Sporcle?

Matt Ramme: I didn’t know. I had an idea to build a website. I didn’t know what it was going to be. I liked the creation of websites. If you’re familiar with the March Madness Bracket for collegiate basketball where millions of people do it every year. They try to predict all the way out to the end. I thought that was an interesting idea, but it would be cool if I could do it for other sports or other leagues. I built a product that allowed people to predict other sports.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Grain CoFounder and COO Carl Memnon (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: I’m more curious about financial engineering. You have Y Combinator which takes certain equity and gives you a certain amount of cash. After YC, you said you raised a seed round. Then you raised seed extension. As what? Safes, convertible notes, equity financing?

Carl Memnon: We raised primarily on YC safes.

Sramana Mitra: $15 million on safe?

Carl Memnon: Yes.

From Developer to Solo Entrepreneur to $5M+ Revenue: Sporcle Founder and CTO Matt Ramme (Part 1)

Developers interested in bootstrapping ad-supported B-to-C startups would find this discussion valuable.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, and raised, and in what kind of background?

Matt Ramme: I grew up in western New York. I went to college at Carnegie Mellon and studied computer science. When I started, it was computer science and math. I wasn’t as much into math, so I was able to get a minor in German which I enjoyed.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Grain CoFounder and COO Carl Memnon (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What is the business model?

Carl Memnon: The business model is simply on the backend. We split net interest income with our bank partner. They pay us a service fee which is a function of the net interest income that they get.

Sramana Mitra: How many bank partners do you have now?

Carl Memnon: We have two bank partners. We’re working with a number of other banks that we hope to onboard in the short term.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Grain Cofounder and COO Carl Memnon (Part 5)

Carl Memnon: We have people who have a credit history but have struggled in the past. From talking to users, we’ve discovered that that’s a function of healthcare cost. Hospitalizations, oftentimes, put people in debt. Another is past job loss. That individual now has great cash flow. That user is now looking to repair their credit.

In both circumstances, our users are using it the way they use their credit cards. The credit aspect is almost a byproduct. Users who have that issue come to us. Then the third is a very interesting segment which are people who have great cash flow, great credit scores, and have traditional credit cards.