Tutoring startup Vygo raises $500,000 in seed funding for its app bringing the sharing economy to education

Brisbane-based tutoring startup Vygo has raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding, bringing on board 13 backers to help propel it to the next stage of national growth.

Founded in 2017 by Ben Hallett, Joel Di Trapani and Steven Hastie, the startup graduated from Brisbane’s River City Labs and muru-D accelerator in May this year.

Hallett tells StartupSmart the startup’s app platform serves to stop university “students falling through the cracks”. It applies a sharing economy model to education by pairing students who have done well in a particular areas with those looking for extra support.

The app uses an institution’s class codes to make sure matches are relevant, and sessions are time-tracked and rated, in an effort to ensure quality.

So far some 5000 student profiles have been created, about a third of which are for tutors.

But this $500,000 in funding is pegged for scaling, with ambitions to eventually reach “a significant proportion of the Australian universities”, Hallett says.

There are also plans in the pipeline to expand overseas, however, Hallett is tight-lipped on where exactly Vygo will be heading first. Read more

Stephanie Palmer-Derrien - SmartCompany - 4 September 2018