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Online training courses existed even before the pandemic. But with the first lockdowns, many EdTech companies (Ed stands for Education) experienced their breakthrough worldwide. Yanka Industries from San Francisco had raised around 100 million dollars in May 2020 and last May even raised 225 million dollars (then 186 million euros) from investors for their platform Masterclass in one fell swoop. There, users can learn how to play poker for an annual fee of $ 200, everything about interior design, gardening, negotiating tactics, playing the guitar or making films – with some of the world’s best tutors in their respective subjects, for example with old cinema master Martin Scorsese.
Some of these start-ups rely less on hobby arts than on imparting professional knowledge: GoodHabitz from the Netherlands collected 200 million euros, the Berlin company CoachHub, which employs 250 people in the city and several thousand freelance coaches worldwide, received – like reported – a financial peak of 25 million euros. Ex-professional footballer Dennis Aogo invested and is committed to the Sharpist platform.
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As the Tagesspiegel has now exclusively found out, the Berlin start-up master plan also collected a further 13 million euros from existing investors via a convertible bond. The last financing round was less than a year ago. Masterplan, founded in 2017 by Daniel Schütt and Stefan Peukert, first built a film studio in Bochum and shot high-quality educational videos there with investor star Frank Thelen and others.
The most important target group are companies and their employees: 250 companies, including Otto Group, VW or EON, develop their own training concepts with master plan tools and use them for internal training. According to the information, the Bielefeld mechanical engineering group DMG Mori has digitalized all product training courses for 140 global sales and customer service points with a master plan in just a few weeks.
“In 2020 alone we tripled our sales. Now it’s about setting the course for the future: With the new capital, we want to be the best offer on the market for small and medium-sized companies as well as our focus on corporations, ”said Stefan Peukert, founder and managing director. To do this, focus on the further development of the software, “Because this is the only way we can offer the most intuitive and maximally flexible solution for all customer needs.”
At Masterplan.com they admit that they have a lot in common with the US company Masterclass: the name, color and logo are very similar. However, that was not always the case – Masterclass had a new design last year. The name master plan comes from the time of the original founding idea that one wanted to offer companies a “master plan for digitization”, says a company spokesman. “The association with Masterclass certainly not disadvantageous for us”.
