South African Owned Go1 secures $200 Million in Series D, Becomes South Africa’s First Unicorn
Australia based Edtech startup Go1 has announced a $200M Series D round valuing the company at more than $1B. This Series D funding round was led by new investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2, alongside AirTree Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Blue Cloud Ventures, Larsen Ventures, TEN13, and Tiger Global. Previous investors include Endeavor Global Catalyst, M12 (Microsoft’s venture capital fund), Madrona Venture Group, SEEK, and Y Combinator.
Go1 was co-founded by South African Melvyn Lubega and Australian Andrew Barnes together with their friends from high school as an online learning platform and has since built the startup into one of the world’s largest corporate education content hubs for on-demand training and resources. The startup which has now raised $200m intends to use the new investment to create new partnerships, expand its Edtech product offerings, and grow its physical presence globally to support its more than 3.5 million learners at over 1,600 customer organizations worldwide.
Melvyn Lubega speaking on the funding said that the startup exists to positive potentials.
“It is extremely humbling to reflect on the journey that we’ve been on as a team. It’s crazy to think how far we’ve come, but our North Star has remained the same which is that we exist to unlock positive potential in people through a love for learning.
“I think that, ultimately, this raise validates the size of the problem we’re trying to solve and the size of the opportunity to address that problem,” said Melvyn.
In 2015, Go1 set out to become a learning and professional development resource for organisations and a critical distribution partner for content providers. Its easy integration and breadth of content have led to widespread adoption on both sides – corporations that now have a single subscription for all workplace training needs, and corporate learning content creators whose insights can find their way to a larger audience.
Nagraj Kashyap, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers speaking said:
“When people think about music, they often think of Spotify and access to unlimited music for one subscription. We believe Go1 is the emerging category leader in providing a similar experience for corporate learning.
Powered by AI and machine learning, Go1’s platform provides an intuitive experience, and creates an opportunity for individuals to expand their professional development goals and explore the resources to help achieve them.
“With premier education providers such as EdX, Coursera, Skillsoft, and Harvard as part of Go1’s subscription, organizations can curate learning content to fit the needs and interests of its workforce. We are delighted to partner with Melvyn, Andrew and the Go1 team to help advance their vision of reaching one billion learners.”
The new unicorn will focus on scaling up its team and partnerships with new platform content and resources.