GoStudent

Overview
GoStudent is a Vienna-headquartered online tutoring provider founded in 2016 by Felix Ohswald and Gregor Müller, selling one-to-one video tutoring for K-12 learners on subscription. A EUR 205 million Series C in June 2021 made it Austria's first edtech unicorn; a EUR 300 million Series D led by Prosus in January 2022 was reported at approximately EUR 3 billion. Four acquisitions followed, then the 2022 edtech correction forced market exits, cost cuts and job reductions. GoStudent is active and privately held, states total funding above EUR 675 million, and reported group operational profitability for 2024.

Why this entity matters
GoStudent is the clearest single data point on Austrian scale-up capability, on three counts. First, capital access: Austria has produced very few companies able to raise nine-figure rounds from global growth investors, and GoStudent raised two inside seven months — EUR 205 million led by DST Global with SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tencent and Dragoneer, then EUR 300 million led by Prosus with Deutsche Telekom. Second, completeness: it is one of very few European consumer-subscription businesses whose full cycle is documented with audited numbers — pandemic demand, a peak reported at approximately EUR 3 billion, a hard correction from September 2022, and a company-reported EBITDA improvement of more than EUR 170 million in two years back to operating profit. Third, graph position: the acquisitions make GoStudent the node through which Studienkreis, Seneca Learning, Tus Media and Fox Education enter the DACH edtech graph, and the July 2024 Fox Education sale to Sdui adds a German consolidation edge.

Company history and product
GoStudent began in 2015 as a WhatsApp homework chat run by Felix Ohswald while he completed a master's in quantitative finance at ETH Zurich; rising volume led him and Gregor Müller to build a dedicated homework app, and the company was founded in Vienna in 2016. By its own timeline it passed 100,000 users in 2017, shifted focus from students to fee-paying parents in 2018 and settled on a paid one-to-one video tutoring subscription in 2019, now covering more than 30 subjects. The June 2021 Series C of EUR 205 million was led by DST Global, with SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tencent, Dragoneer, Coatue, Left Lane Capital and DN Capital joining, at more than EUR 1.4 billion. The January 2022 Series D of EUR 300 million was led by Prosus with Deutsche Telekom, reported by Tech.eu, Trending Topics and PitchBook at roughly EUR 3 billion. Acquisitions followed: Fox Education Services of Vienna, behind SchoolFox, KidsFox and TeamFox, in September 2021; Seneca Learning and the Spanish marketplace Tus Media Group in February 2022; and Studienkreis, founded in Bochum in 1974 and running roughly 1,000 tutoring centres, about a third franchised, bought from IK Partners in December 2022 at an undisclosed price. From September 2022 it exited unprofitable markets, cut costs and reduced headcount, and Fox Education was sold to the Koblenz-based Sdui Group in July 2024. For 2024 it reported audited Core EBITDA above EUR 14 million against IFRS-reported EBITDA of minus EUR 4 million after one-time costs from discontinued activities, and operational EBITDA positivity from March 2024 — company audited-statement claims of 2 September 2025. Prosus has since marked the stake far below the 2022 peak.

Role in the DACH startup and technology ecosystem
GoStudent is the reference Austrian scale-up of the 2021-2022 cycle. Austria's venture market is far smaller than Germany's, and the case Austrian funds and policy bodies make with GoStudent is concrete: a Vienna-founded, Vienna-headquartered company still run by its two founders put DST Global, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tencent, Dragoneer, Coatue, Prosus and Deutsche Telekom on one cap table inside seven months, which no other Austrian company has done. Studienkreis then made it a physical operator of roughly 1,000 tutoring locations across Germany and, via Studienkreis's earlier LernQuadrat deal, Austria — one of the larger offline education networks in German-speaking Europe. The Fox Education sale moved a Vienna software asset into a German consolidator, Sdui, which raised EUR 21 million alongside the deal — DACH-internal consolidation rather than a US or UK exit. GoStudent is equally the region's most legible case study in how 2021 growth-round pricing was later revised, because the investors that set the peak also published the revisions.

Selected relationships and affiliations
Co-founders Felix Ohswald (CEO) and Gregor Müller (COO), both named to the Forbes Europe 30 Under 30 list in 2023. Investors: Prosus (Series D lead), DST Global (Series C lead), SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tencent, Dragoneer, Coatue, Left Lane Capital, DN Capital and Deutsche Telekom. Acquisitions: Fox Education Services (Vienna, September 2021), Seneca Learning (United Kingdom, February 2022), Tus Media Group (Spain, February 2022) and Studienkreis (Bochum, December 2022, from IK Partners, its holder since 2017, which had added the Austrian chain LernQuadrat in 2018), advised by GP Bullhound and goetzpartners. Divestment: Fox Education Services to the Sdui Group of Koblenz in July 2024.

Startuprad.io relevance
GoStudent sits in Startuprad.io's Austrian scale-up and edtech clusters and appears in five tagged posts, all monthly DACH news episodes from January 2022 to May 2025. The span matches the entity: January 2022 covers the Series D month itself, the February, March and May 2023 episodes cover the correction as it happened rather than in retrospect, and May 2025 places GoStudent inside the return of DACH unicorn and M&A activity — one of the few contemporaneous DACH-media sequences following a single edtech scale-up through a full cycle.

Public source context
Sources: GoStudent's site and press releases at https://www.gostudent.org , notably the 2 September 2025 release on 2024 profitability and its about-us timeline; EU-Startups at https://www.eu-startups.com on the EUR 1.4 billion Series C mark; Tech.eu at https://tech.eu and TechCrunch at https://techcrunch.com on the funding rounds; IK Partners at https://ikpartners.com on Studienkreis; Sdui at https://sdui.de on the Fox Education sale; and Trending Topics at https://www.trendingtopics.eu on the Prosus revisions. The approximately EUR 903 million Prosus mark that ended unicorn status is reported by Trending Topics from Prosus disclosures, is effectively single-source, and is not verified here against a primary Prosus filing.

Startuprad.io coverage of GoStudent

GoStudent appears in the following Startuprad.io interviews, analysis and long-form profiles.

DACH Startup News May 2025: Unicorns, M&A, and VC Surge
Published: 29 May 2025
Last updated: 27 August 2026
Coverage type: News
https://www.startuprad.io/post/dach-startup-news-may-2025-unicorns-m-a-and-vc-surge

Startup News Germany (and GSA) — May 2023
Published: 15 March 2026
Last updated: 27 August 2026
Coverage type: News
https://www.startuprad.io/post/this-month-in-german-swiss-and-austrian-gsa-startups-may-2023-episode-385

Episode #376 This Month in German, Swiss, and Austrian (GSA) Startups — March 2023
Published: 15 March 2026
Last updated: 27 August 2026
Coverage type: News
https://www.startuprad.io/post/episode-376-this-month-in-german-swiss-and-austrian-gsa-startups-march-2023

This Month in German, Swiss, and Austrian (GSA) Startups — February 2023
Published: 15 March 2026
Last updated: 27 August 2026
Coverage type: News
https://www.startuprad.io/post/this-month-in-german-swiss-and-austrian-gsa-startups-february-2023

This Month in German Startups (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) — January 2022
Published: 15 March 2026
Last updated: 14 August 2026
Coverage type: News
https://www.startuprad.io/post/this-month-in-german-startups-germany-austria-switzerland-january-2022-1

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Canonical record: https://www.startuprad.io/entities/gostudent