Skillshare CEO and co-founder Michael Karnjanaprakorn
Skillshare, the peer-to-peer learning start-up I profiled recently, has raised $ 3.1 million from Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. I reported in my profile that the two VC firms were close to funding Skillshare’s Series A round and now it looks like it’s official.
I like New York City-based Skillshare because it’s a simple platform that helps turn anyone into a teacher. Users can offer their own offline classes based on their skills or expertise and Skillshare takes 15 percent of the revenues. Since launching in April, Skillshare has helped organize about 500 classes in New York with 2,500 students and many more users who have browsed the site.
The new money will help the company as it expands its scope beyond New York. This week, it branched out to San Francisco and Philadelphia with plans to hit Boston, New Orleans, Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles later this year. CEO and co-founder Michael Karnjanaprakorn told me earlier that he thinks Skillshare can continue to grow and ultimately create physical schools and online classes.
Union Square’s Fred Wilson said he was so taken with the idea of Skillshare, he is planning on offering his MBA Mondays classes on the site this fall. His partner Albert Wenger recently conducted a course through Skillshare and said he thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Skillshare, which previously raised $ 550,000 in a seed round from Founder Collective, SV Angel and other angels, is part of a larger movement in education 2.0 and is adding to the growing momentum in what Om calls the P2P or person-to-person economy. Take a look at this video interview I conducted with Karnjanaprakorn.
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