Spotify for textbooks Perlego raises $4.8m
by Startacus Admin
Perlego - billed as the 'Spotify for textbooks' - recently closed a $4.8m (£3.7) venture round, signalling 
a new chapter in it's mission to grow the company across the UK and Europe. Leading the round is ADV, with participation from existing angel investors, including Simon Franks, co-founder of Lovefilm, Peter Hinssen and Alex Chesterman, founder of Zoopla.
Founded by Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis, Perlego have been featured a couple of times on Startacus. Back in January 2017, we chatted to Founder Gauthier Van Malderen to find out more about their textbook subscription service and more recently we awarded them with our startup of the week title.
Perlego gives students and professionals unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of professional and academic eBook titles for £12 a month. Perlego is already working with most leading publishers including Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press and Macmillan Higher Education. Publishers receive 65% of each subscription on a consumption basis. Perlego has also announced a new partnership with Cengage Learning, one of the world's largest textbook publishers.
Funds will be used to grow the team and support the company’s growth across the UK and Europe as well as further developing its product for students and professionals.
Gauthier Van Malderen, Co-Founder and CEO, said:
“Our mission is to make educational content accessible for all. In this digital age, we believe that anyone should be able to learn anything at any time. Knowledge should be more accessible, not locked behind sky-high price tags and tuition fees. We are delighted to have raised from such forward-thinking investors, to help us build the world’s online learning library.”
"Students prefer flexibility and choice over ownership and virtually every form of media have encountered this paradigm shift. With textbook prices having risen 847% since 1972 - over three times the rate of inflation - and the ownership model for textbooks largely broken, a subscription model for textbooks just makes sense.
"Publishers have also lost out due to second-hand book sales and piracy, so we help them regain market share in a scalable way.
“Currently Perlego has partnered with over 650 publishers, including 8 out of the top 10 leading academic and professional publishers.”.
Mike Dimelow, CIO at ADV, said:
“In the past we all bought books but now we consume content digitally. Spotify has re-defined this consumption for music, Perlego will do the same for educational textbooks and professional learning. Its platform connects consumers to publishers and enables partial ownership, we feel this is a winning model. Consumers pay for what they read whilst publishers monetise content they commission.
“The team has already began working with the majority of the largest academic publishers and have validated their business model with a mass of users. We are excited to play a small part in helping to redefine this industry.”
Perlego also joined Founders Factory this month as part of its edtech accelerator programme, backed by Holtzbrinck Macmillan one of the world's leading academic publishers.
If you like the sound of this startup, you might want to also read up on:
Bookaxe makes book discovery easy with machine learning.
Toppa wants to be the Netflix of bitesize learning.
Afterbook - honour and memorialise your loved ones.
Subscribe to our newsletter
If you would like to receive our startup themed newsletter, full of the latest startup opportunities, events, news, stories, tips and advice, then sign up here.
Pixyle AI secures seed funding round to help fashion ecommerce deliver better search experiences, enabling consumers to get to their desired items faster.
SaaS platform Mambu’s global network of partners share their insights and predictions on the forces likely to shape the industry next year.
Employee wellbeing experts Loopin share some insights on the truth behind your employee's notice of resignation.
Proptech startup Speiz secures seed investment to support its mission of digitally transforming the broken brokerage market.
The lowdown on Manchester based startup Chatloop and its mission to transform social media, giving you the power to start conversations on any website.
BT reveals new cohort of innovative startups aiming to help solve sustainability challenges in the manufacturing sector.
London-based startup Ribbon is on a mission to help other businesses better understand their users and build better product experiences.
London-based SaaS startup OutThink has developed an innovative approach to help companies to visualise risk, target interventions and prevent data breaches.
Participants in Catalyst’s Co-Founders programme offered opportunity to avail of a £10,000 proof of concept grant from Techstart to help validate their business idea.
Atoa announces pre-seed funding for its solution to empower and improve cash flow for independent, small and mid-sized UK retail merchants.
Published on: 16th September 2018
If you would like to enable commenting via your Startacus account, please enable Disqus functionality in your Account Settings.
- Pixyle AI boosts fashion retailer sales by improving product discovery using AI 8th Dec 2022 Pixyle AI secures seed funding round to help fashion ecommerce deliver better search experiences, enabling consumers to get to their desired items faster.
- Norwegian proptech Speiz raises €1.3M to launch new European platform for warehouse leasing 5th Dec 2022 Proptech startup Speiz secures seed investment to support its mission of digitally transforming the broken brokerage market.
- BT pushes ahead with new sustainable digital solutions through its Green Tech Innovation Platform 1st Dec 2022 BT reveals new cohort of innovative startups aiming to help solve sustainability challenges in the manufacturing sector.
- Catalyst and Techstart offering startup co-founders the chance to win £10k proof of concept grants 30th Nov 2022 Participants in Catalyst’s Co-Founders programme offered opportunity to avail of a £10,000 proof of concept grant from Techstart to help validate their business idea.
