Why Change Ventures invested in Memby
🚀 We are excited to welcome Memby to the Change Venture portfolio! We led Memby’s €800k pre-seed round and co-invested together with Europe’s leading EdTech fund, Brighteye Ventures, as well as angel investors Justas Janauskas (CEO of Qoorio; co-founder of Vinted), Martynas Gudonavicius (CEO of Trafi) and the Marius Jakulis Jason foundation.
What makes Memby stand out in the EdTech space?
Memby is the first one-to-many real-time after-school tutoring service in Europe. Their classes provide highly engaging group lessons, with techniques and metrics measuring behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement of the students. The classes on Memby’s platform follow the national curriculum of each country, which allows them to have numerous students in the classrooms at once, with the average number of students reaching 40.
Group classes mean that Memby is making quality education more accessible, one lecture at a time. Memby costs one fifth or less of the cost of one-on-one tutoring per class. They carefully handpick the teachers that are not only experts in their field, coming from the most respected universities worldwide, but are truly energetic, youthful and eager to help students learn. We believe that Memby can pioneer the one-to-many tutoring market, delivering live, online, large class and engaging tutoring.
What about the potential for the global online tutoring market?
This market was valued at $4.81B in 2019 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.1% from 2020 to 2027. There will be 2 billion more learners in the world by 2050. Observed higher education levels led to increased earnings and higher employment rates. This supports the adoption of online mobile learning methods for all age groups and course types. Furthermore, these methods offer numerous advantages, including the elimination of geographic constraints. Online tutoring services render a tutor’s assistance from a global network of individuals having expertise in a subject.
Which markets are they tackling?
Following an extremely successful conquest of the Lithuanian market, Memby is launching next in Greece and Poland. Both of these markets have centralised curricula set by governments, suitable GDP per capita and very high tutoring rates. Familiarity with online classes has been boosted during the pandemic, so the timing is definitely on their side. There are some other exciting markets on their radar, but we won’t lay all their cards on the table just yet.
Where did it all start and who are the founders behind this?
A few years ago, a high-schooler called Benas, who has been struggling at academics and barely reached a passing grade, approached Memby’s CEO and co-founder Eimantas for some private lessons. Eimantas provided him with two key materials: properly prepared study plan and sincere care. It only took Benas 3 lessons to get the highest scores on his tests and to rebuild his confidence and passion for learning. The desire to help more students like Benas — was a starting point for Memby — a one-of-a-kind online school which is built on high quality education, mutual trust and belief you can achieve anything you set your mind to.
The two great minds behind this start-up are: Eimantas Bekėža and Silvestras Stonkus. We are thrilled that such outstanding entrepreneurs chose us as their partners for this journey. We may be a tad biased, but we do believe that these guys are an absolutely unstoppable duo with immense passion and grit that will help them conquer any market they are after. We can guarantee that once you hear them pitch and see them execute you will not have any doubt in your mind that they can achieve anything they set their mind on.
Welcome to the Change Ventures family!
Gabriele Poteliunaite
Associate
Change Ventures