What EdTech startups you need to know if you are launching your own educational project

The ongoing crisis is changing economic content around the world and fueling demand for massive retraining of specialists. And classical education, it seems, tends to completely go online. In this light, startups that offer solutions in the corporate education segment become more noticeable. [T&D, L&D]… They attract investment, close deals with large brands, and companies get opportunities for effective retraining of employees and business adaptation to the changed conditions.

Let’s talk about five educational projects that are worth studying as examples if you plan to enter the Russian and international markets or launch something similar in the company where you work now. By the way, we help to cope with this task within the framework of our new acceleration program

  Photo: Stephen Leonardi.  Source: Unsplash.com
Photo: Stephen Leonardi. Source: Unsplash.com

Curricula Are corporate cybersecurity trainings for office employees, performed in the “no presentation” format. Animated films take the place of slides and instructions. They illustrate key threatsthat a conventional bank employee, accountant, lawyer or ordinary clerk may encounter. These are phishing, social engineering, attacks on unprotected mobile devices and other situations. The multheroes of the project, explaining the basic principles of information hygiene, introduce the students to the options of behavior in them. One of the issues can be view for free after registering with the service.

It should be noted that Curricula also has content. on GDPR and PCI DSS certification

The project is led by a cybersecurity expert with seven years of experience with the North American Electrical Reliability Corporation (NERC). He founded the startup back in 2015, but investments [3 млн долларов от фонда RCP Equity] attracted only at the beginning of 2020. The money will be used to develop courses and attract an audience.

Among the corporate clients of the service are distinguished Greenhouse… This is a SaaS recruiting platform that The New York Times in 2015 included to the list of future “unicorns” – companies with a valuation of one billion dollars [В 2018-м она была на полпути к цели]…


Instruqt – A platform for learning Kubernetes, Python and Azure DevOps, providing a course builder. With its help, companies can create a virtual infrastructure and customize course content – for example, to introduce employees to the desired technology stack or to organize online technology workshops. Such opportunities are provided by tools, documented on GitBook.

The history of the project dates back to the 2016 HashiConf EU software developer conference, where a team of engineers helped visitors to Vagrant, Terraform and Packer… The interest in such solutions and the format of their presentation pushed one of the team members to launch their own educational project. This is how the Instruqt platform appeared. One of the first versions of it was shown at the Google Cloud Next conference – then the terminals at the stand were issued in the form of old school arcade machines

Photo: Louie Castro-Garcia.  Source: Unsplash.com
Photo: Louie Castro-Garcia. Source: Unsplash.com

Last January, the company attracted an investment of 2 million euros. New funds will be used to expand the scope of the courses. At the same time, the product is already use large organizations like HashiCorp [там работал основатель] and Google, as well as XebiaLabs and GoDataDriven.


Uptale – a service for preparing VR guides and educational multimedia in 360 ° format. Allows you to export content to SCORM or xAPI and use it in your LMS… Plus – provides the client company with analytics to track the progress of students.

The “killer feature” of the project is that it provides all the necessary opportunities for companies that would like to introduce new employees to “Combat” working conditions or show experienced professionals the structure of systems they have not yet studied. In the context of remote control, such solutions have become even more relevant.

The project was launched in 2015, so the team worked out in detail the technological base and passed through two thematic acceleration programs: Station F and WebVR. Today a startup has a pool of large clients: its solutions are used for emergency situations and safety training at Airbus production facilities, plus – for training the attendants of the events of the Union of European Football Associations [UEFA]…


Everwise Is a marketplace of courses for the development of emotional intelligence and management skills. Content is prepared by experts from companies first hundred of the Fortune list and founders of promising startups. for example, the system has lessons from a member of the Salesforce and VISA board of directors, who shares the difficulties in the CEO’s work and how to resolve them.

Project founded almost nine years ago, two entrepreneurs involved in the Audium autoresponder system [ее выкупили Cisco Systems в 2006-м ], and an expert in HR management, advising international companies. To date, Everwise has attracted over $ 27.5 million in investments from major funds like Sequoia, Canvas Ventures and Webb Investment Network, and last year – unite with the Torch project offering similar capabilities to their audience.

Everwise’s client companies include Apple, Lyft, Nissan, Microsoft, Visa and other brands.


Clustree Is an analytical platform for HR management. It allows you to assign competencies to employees from the library of 53 thousand different “skills” and opens access to AI systemsthat help to select relevant candidates depending on the characteristics in the vacancy and the existing skills of full-time specialists. Leaders can track the progress of team strengthening using dashboards.

Photo: Sigmund.  Source: Unsplash.com
Photo: Sigmund. Source: Unsplash.com

Since 2014, the Clustree team has raised $ 11.6 million from funds such as Alven, Creandum and Idinvest Partners, and exactly a year ago sold project for 18.5 million Cornerstone – one of the largest firms in the field of personnel management [3,6 тыс. B2B-клиентов из 187 стран]…


We launched “Aktion Accelerator” for projects in the segment of corporate education. It includes five areas: from “Learning 4.0” to the organization of information interaction within the teams of enterprises. We accept applications, assign mentors, share the Aktion-MCFER infrastructure with all participants, and allocate 500 thousand rubles to the winners of each track.

Applications can be submitted to teams that are just starting to develop the idea of ​​their own service for corporate trainings and courses, plan to help business leaders evaluate the results and effectiveness of the educational process, or are going to bring a new solution for personnel management to the market.

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