Productivity
Jan 10, 2025
Venture (Co-head of product): Building the biggest european learning app
Scaled Europe’s largest student app from 800K → 15M users & €5M+ ARR as the only non-founder on the strategy team — building subscriptions, ads, and an AI tutor used by 1M+ students, while co-leading product & design.
Role
Productivity
👀 Overview
What it is: Knowunity is Europe’s largest student learning platform (15M+ users). I joined in the early growth phase and grew into Co-Head of Product, where I led monetization, AI, and strategy. As the only non-founder in the strategy team, I helped scale the company from 800K → 15M users and €5M+ ARR.
Why it matters: Building sticky consumer products for teens is notoriously hard — low willingness to pay, high churn, and fragile trust. We built a sustainable model by combining subscriptions, ads, and an AI tutor that became a daily companion for >1M students.
🎯 Objectives
Primary: Build up a stellar (product) team & culture.
Secondary: Scale user base while building a sustainable business model.
Additional: Explore AI’s potential to improve learning outcomes & retention.
📊 Key success metrics
User growth: Scaled from 800K → 15M users.
Revenue: Built subscription product from scratch to $300K+ MRR & helped build up our B2B product.
Fundraising: Helped raise $15M+ Series A & prepare company for +20M Series B.
👯 Audience & messaging
Persona: Students aged 12–19, seeking quick, accessible learning support.
Key message: “A daily learning companion that feels as engaging as social media — but actually helps you learn & succeed in school.”
🧐 Design inspiration & style
Like: TikTok (engagement loops), Duolingo (habit-building, gamification).
Avoid: traditional LMS, clunky UX, retention-killing paywalls.
📆 Scope & timeline
Year 1 – Fundraising & early monetization
Fundraising: Prepared pitch decks, investor follow-ups & financial models → raised $15M Series A.
Subscription: Designed, tested, and launched first subscription product → scaled to $300K+ MRR. Iterated pricing & feature sets; rolled out from Germany to multiple countries. Ensured monetization did not harm retention.
Year 2 – Scale monetization & AI
People & strategy: Only non-founder in the strategy team, driving early company strategy. Stepped in as interim Head of People to stabilize culture after leadership turnover (incl. 1:1s with ~60 employees).
Ads: Scaled ads product → improved CTRs by 8x. Improved offering end-to-end working hand in hand with our sales team to increase B2B revenue.
AI tutor: Conceived and prototyped first version via “red button test” (manually responding to student requests). Later built fully automated LLM-based version → 1M+ monthly actives.
Year 3 – Co-Head of Product
Co-led product & design team (PMs + designers); set roadmap, strategy, and rituals.
Oversaw ARR scaling past €5M and helped prepare company for subsequent Series B.
🧑🎓 Outcome & learnings
Learned to blend strategy & execution — from fundraising narratives to weekly A/B testing cycles.
Proved that edtech can monetize at scale without killing retention.
Built, scaled, and validated AI in education before LLM hype — from scrappy prototypes to a tutor used by 1M+ students.
Gained experience in team leadership, people ops, and org resilience in hypergrowth.
Left the company to start my own venture having helped build a scalable business model, a strong culture, and a clear path toward Series B.
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