Studydrive - Only two years from bootstrapping to exit

Carnival in Rio changed everything. Sven Gasper and Philipp Mackeprang spent a semester abroad in Brazil. There was something they noticed: It wasn’t only their university back home in Maastricht that lacked an easy way to exchange learning materials online. That was in 2013, shortly before they got their Bachelor's degree. At the beginning of 2019, the exit to Stepstone was a success.

Capital was scarce in the first few years. Until 2016, bootstrapping was the only way to survive. In 2016, DvH Ventures, Employour, and a business angel invested in the company as seed investors. In the Series A round, Alstin Capital and Amadeus Venture Capital joined. Today, around sixty people work for the Berlin-based startup. We talked to Sven Gasper about founding Studydrive.

What is your USP? We are very strong in community building. With our product, we have managed to offer students a one-stop online shop on the web for their studies, where they will find transcripts, learning material, orientation offers and career perspectives. In addition, they can exchange thoughts and ideas with their fellow students. This makes our offer unique.

Why do you do what you do? What drives you? We founded Studydrive directly after getting our bachelor's degrees. It was a solution to a problem that we had ourselves. We basically built the product we had wished for as students. With Studydrive, we make a difference today and have a positive impact on how happy and successful students are in their future careers. For us, this is a huge privilege.

What was the trigger for the founding Studydrive? We had the idea floating around in our heads for a long time before the carnival in Rio. We were studying abroad in Brazil for one semester and sitting on the bus back to Sao Paulo talking. That is when we realised that it was extremely difficult to find all the relevant documents for our course on the Internet. This wasn’t just a problem at our university back home in Maastricht, but a widespread issue - and a global market.

What are you particularly proud of? Quite different things. The most satisfying feeling is to see how the team and the company grow. We have employees who can still teach us – the founders – a thing or two. We are also motivated by the positive feedback we get from students and companies. These are the moments when we realise that we’re doing something incredibly useful.

What is your goal for the next three to five years? International growth. We started in the DACH region, and are now present in the Netherlands, as well. We are also preparing the Europe-wide rollout, which will already be relevant in the next twelve months. We want to expand into the USA in 2020. In the long run, there is no reason why we shouldn’t roll out Studydrive globally. The only limiting factors are time and money.

studydrive.net