Samyr Qureshi does not want to be the typical boom-and-sell founder.
The 30-year-old has spent the last eight years steadily building his company, Knack, which offers a peer-to-peer tutoring model that educational institutions can license. When he secured a seven-figure investment in 2020, he wanted to focus on sustainable growth.
“We’re in a great spot financially; we’ve said, ‘Let’s focus on getting the business in place for not always needing capital from outside sources,” Qureshi, Knack’s co-founder and CEO, said. “And obviously, the best way to do that is growth through revenue.”
But the company is at its next growth stage and exclusively told Tampa Bay Inno it closed a Series A in July 2022 for an undisclosed amount.
According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Knack raised $11.2 million in February 2023. Knack CEO Qureshi would not confirm that number for the Series A last summer but did say the raise was the biggest for the company yet. It had a mix of existing investors and new ones, all undisclosed. The latest funding will go toward sales and marketing efforts as the company continues to target large universities.
The team signed the term sheet in the spring 2022, with the stock market experiencing one of its first big drops right after.
“We braced for any changes driven by that, but we’re very lucky to have a base of investors who said, ‘We believe in what you’re doing,’” Qureshi said. “And as universities are fed with more pressure to ‘tighten the belt,’ our model can provide an affordable mechanism for student support.”
The company is now aiming to be in the Series B territory with revenue, which, for many companies, is in the $5 million to $10 million range. But Qureshi added that does not necessarily mean Knack will be raising a Series B round.
“We want to be in that territory, not to chase a series B but to say we’ve graduated to the next weight class, if you will,” he said. “We’re out of the game of the funding side of things; it’s more shifting to growth capital.”
Knack is growing with seven figures of revenue, according to Qureshi, and is on track to triple by the end of the year. He expects the next 18 to 24 months to be the company's breakout.
Slow and steady
The growth to reach this point did not come quickly — Knack launched in the direct-to-consumer space in 2016, pivoting to a B2B model in 2019. In the interim, it racked up investments with some of the most prominent players in the Tampa Bay tech scene, including Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik and ConnectWise co-founder Arnie Bellini.
Qureshi believes the edtech space will continue to grow as founders see the opportunity within universities and higher education institutions continue to feel the pressure of doing more with less. Former local startup standout Ed Buckley, who exited his company Peerfit in 2022, recently announced his foray into the edtech space.
“Everyone is paying attention to what’s happening in schools — or not happening — and responding,” Qureshi said.
While Qureshi is still laser-focused on growth as the company enters its eighth year, he puts community commitment on equal footing. Qureshi, who was raised in Pinellas County and recently moved back to St. Petersburg from Tampa, proudly touted that the company has disbursed $1 million to its tutors.
“There is this real mission and impact, which is creating jobs on one side and creating pathways to education, but also beyond college to build an income and family,” he said. “If we were building a business that didn’t have a social impact, I would be more apt to say, ‘Let’s find a path to exit.’ But there’s a real impact to what we do.”
That’s not to say the idea of an exit hasn’t been thrown around, although Qureshi repeatedly stated it would not happen soon.
“For us, it’s about doing right by everyone that’s been involved,” he said. Every Knack employee has ownership in the company. “There are some scenarios where it’s advantageous for the founders and some that are advantageous for the investors; when everyone wins, then you move on. We haven’t shopped the business around, but given what’s happened in the market, we’d think about it in the future. But no, we don’t spend a lot of cycles on how to get acquired.”
