In the same way that Kickstarter connects users with backers for their projects, SkillShare connects experts with students for their classes. The start-up just raised a $3.1 million in a Series A round of venture financing, led by Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, to extend its offerings. Previously the company raised a $550,000 round of seed funding from Founder Collective and SV Angel, among others.
Betabeat has been reporting on this funding for some time, but was too gun shy to publish without confirmation from the founders. Lesson learned.
The start-up is expanding quickly, opening offices in offices in San Francisco and Philadelphia, with hopes to expand to Boston, New Orleans, Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles by the end of the year.
The money comes at a time when many start-ups are rushing to close their financing or struggling to secure an A round. It’s a nice chunk of change SkillShare can use to get to the next level.
To promote the service, investor Zach Klein is offering $1000 in free classes. Anyone can sign up and invoice him through Venmo (another service he invests in). It’s a double plug, but a nice promotion.
In recent months Betabeat has covered the explosion of crowd funded platforms coming out of New York. Kickstarter has seen its the amount of money coming though its service accelerate rapidly. Quirky raised a big round and grew its user base significantly. SkillShare, who has some of the same investors, seems poised to ride the same wave.
