GoPeer, a platform designed to connect high school students with local, college-age tutors, has raised a $2 million led by angel investor Ed Baker, former VP of product and growth at Uber.
With the funding, GoPeer plans to hire up to 12 people, more than doubling its current team of eight. It will also build out its digital classroom tool as families stare down the prospect of coronavirus-driven school closures.
"GoPeer is excited," said co-founder and CEO Ethan Binder. "We’ve been generating revenue and covering expenses, and we’re excited to really use this capital to go to the next level."
GoPeer was founded in 2017 by Binder, Zura Mestiashvili and Erik Laucks from their dorm rooms at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. The startup then spent some time in Rhode Island, where it participated in Social Enterprise Greenhouse’s Impact Accelerator program as well as MassChallenge Rhode Island, Binder said. GoPeer moved to Boston last year.
GoPeer's platform matches kids in need of tutoring with high school students, who are paid $20 an hour. The startup has so far served more than 16,000 K-12 students.
"GoPeer built our own digital classroom, our own software, that makes learning online feel like an in-person lesson—but even more engaging by leveraging technology and a variety of other tools," Binder said. "Some families even call GoPeer 'the Zoom for tutoring' because we solved the videoconferencing problem, but also a host of other issues when it comes to learning online."
The oversubscribed seed round comes almost exactly one year after GoPeer announced its last fundraise, a $265,000 round from angels including Deborah Quazzo, managing partner at San Francisco-based GSV Ventures and Providence-based Slater Technology Fund. Quazzo participated in this round as well.
Other investors in GoPeer's seed round include Javier Olivan, VP of growth at Facebook; Aaron Schildkrout, former head of driver product at Uber and now an investor at Addition; and three investors from Boston-based Launchpad Venture Group: Tom Medrek, Will Weddleton and George Gong.
