AirTree Ventures investee Go1 has raised undisclosed new capital that values the business at around $3.5 billion and has completed its largest acquisition to date.
This latest funding round for the Brisbane-based online corporate training business follows a $US100 million mid-2022 round which valued the company at $US2 billion. New investors in the latest round are US firms Insight Partners and Greylock Partners. Existing investors AirTree, Salesforce Ventures, SoftBank and Madrona Venture Group supported the round.
It is believed most of the new capital was required for the acquisition of German company Blinkist which provides a learning app, designed to be accessed from mobile phones. The app provides access to summaries of professional development books and podcasts and has millions of users worldwide. Blinkist material was already accessible through the Go1 portal.
Insight Partners was an investor in Blinkist and has reinvested that stake into Go1 along with other Blinkist investors, US firms Greycroft Ventures and Headline as well as German firms IBB Ventures and MGO Digital Ventures.
Go1 co-founder and chief executive Andrew Barnes said: “The acquisition forms the foundation of an innovative new model of corporate learning, which seeks to engage learners through their day-to-day lives.
“At Go1, our goal is to provide organisations with access to high-quality, meaningful content, and we can now take that a step further to meet learners where they are.
“By joining forces, we can offer our customers and partners access to Blinkist’s full library of digests of key ideas from professional development books, which have already proven to be among Go1’s most popular and engaging titles. Importantly, in time we can give users the power to learn outside traditional workplace settings. Employees will be able to read, listen, or watch, content at any depth – a soundbite, a 15-minute summary, or a full course – on any device, and at any time or location.”
Blinkist chief executive and co-founder Holger Seim said: “We started Blinkist as a service for learners but saw growing interest from companies in recent years. Combining forces with Go1 lets us capitalise on this trend and establish Blinkist as a strong addition to companies’ learning mix, while continuing to grow our consumer brand.”
The addition of Blinkist’s team of 160 will take Go1’s total staff close to 800.
Go1 was founded by Barnes, Vu Tran, Chris Eigeland and Chris Hood in 2014. The four friends initially set up a website development business. After receiving numerous requests to build corporate training systems, however, they decided to build an affordable training portal to which companies could subscribe to provide their employees with access to training material.
The founders took their concept through the YCombinator accelerator program in the US in 2015 and received seed funding from the accelerator of $US120,000 for 7% equity. They then raised a further $1 million in 2015, in the form of a convertible note, from Sydney firm Tank Stream Ventures and Brisbane technology investor Steve Baxter.
Later investors included Microsoft’s corporate venturing arm M12 and Sydney-based Our Innovation Fund (now OIF Ventures).
In mid-2020, Go1 raised a $US40 million Series C round jointly led by SEEK (ASX: SEK) and Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group. Other participants in that round included M12, Our Innovation Fund and new investor Salesforce Ventures.
AirTree Ventures made a separate $7 million investment in Go1 in late 2020.
In 2021, a $US200 Series D round valued Go1 at more than $US1 billion. That round was led by SoftBank of Japan’s Vision 2 global technology fund. Other new investors in the round were New York growth capital firm Blue Cloud Ventures, Perth-based Larsen Ventures, Scott Shleifer and John Curtius from New York-based Tiger Global, and Queensland-based high net worth investor syndicate TEN13.
Existing investors participating in the round included AirTree, Salesforce Ventures, M12, Madrona, SEEK and Y Combinator.
In mid-2022 AirTree and Sydney education technology investment firm Five Sigma co-led a $100 million investment round in Go1. Most of the supporters of the 2021 raising also supported that round.
Also in 2022, Go1 acquired Paris-based Coorpacademy which provides a similar online training portal to Go1 in French.
As with Coorpacademy, Go1 plans to continue to operate Blinkist under its established name.
Image: Accessing training material through Go1.