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Estonian start-up company 99math raised $ 2.1 million to strengthen its edtech maths gaming platform, which aims to make maths fun.
The new funds will help the company reach the US and other markets with more social play.
The 3-year-old 99math has a multiplayer math game that teachers use in classrooms around the world. After launching as a beta tool in 2019, 99math has grown into a gaming platform for one million kids, or three times the number it had last year.
Together, students in 99 maths solved more than 600 million math problems, or three million a day. It turns out that one of the tricks to getting kids into math is to have them compete with each other in the classroom.
“We have also significantly upgraded our team. The game design thinking is a whole new level. And it all starts, ”said Tõnis Kusmin, CEO of 99math, in an interview with GamesBeat.
Getting traction helped it get the funding to increase classroom usage and implement monetization.
The proceeds of the current round will be invested in expanding the company’s scope and improving the current product.
“We have an extremely excited fan base, but we’re still small in the United States,” he said. “We have a small fraction of the 40 million children. We therefore take the product to more users. And we improve the classroom experience. We’re pretty good there already. And the third mission is to expand the full home game. ”
The company focuses on grade two to grade eight.
Play Ventures led the way, with the participation of existing shareholders Flyer One Ventures and Change Ventures.
Make the court for teachers, make money to parents
99math is a free tool for teachers and schools to engage students and it works as a platform for game-based math practice.
Starting a game takes less than a minute, and the entire classroom can be played simultaneously. Math problems are generated based on a teacher’s choice in a few clicks.
Both teachers and parents can monitor the progress that children make over time. When children receive negative feedback about their skills, they begin to believe they are not good at it, Kusmin said. Eventually they try less. The focus for 99math is to design fun games first, Kusmin said.
The game tries to celebrate success and reward the player for progress in motivating the kids to keep going. So far, key markets include the US and Latin America.
The company allows teachers to use the platform for free, but he hopes to make money from parents. Other companies also monetized parent subscriptions. This has helped the company when it comes to fundraising.
An experienced team
Kusmin has previously launched three different edtech products, including the Tebo platform used by 50% of Estonian teachers. The co-founders include Timo Timmi, who was named in the Transferwise 20 Under 20 Entrepreneurs list in Europe, and Ain Arend, who built his first content management system in high school and led the technology team at ADM.
The company now has 10 people, spread across Estonia, the rest of Europe and the USA. The online education market is expected to reach $ 580 billion by 2027. This provides a great opportunity for beginners to transform the way they approach teaching and learning.
“We’ll keep it super slim, and we’re working with pretty fast shipping and learning cycles,” Kusmin said. “We do a lot of play tests, we spend a lot of time in the US in classrooms.”
“We are very impressed with the 99Math team and how they have created a platform that encourages learning through play,” Harri Manninen, founding partner at Play Ventures, said in a statement. “They managed to not only make studying mathematics interesting, but also to increase the level of involvement of students and their performance! We support the 99math team as they continue to introduce motivational game design in education. ”
The company is adding more features. It started with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It outlined games for the future from first to sixth grade. Then it hopes to expand to other kinds of lessons. It is conceivable that this kind of competitive game could be used for e-sports, he said.
“There are 40 million students studying math in the US and about one billion worldwide,” Vital Laptenok, general partner at FlyerOne, said in a statement. “The market is large and definitely needs a tool to keep up with the times and involve students. We are happy to support 99math in their quest to improve the gamified platform and make the learning process more efficient and interesting. ”
The startup recently hired team members – product manager Hanna Talving, a former CEO of extremely viral SayAt.me, and Ihor Nikolaiev, a former lead game designer and producer on Gardenscapes and several Gameloft titles. The team has traveled to the USA a lot.
“We learn so much every time we come back. After a few days we have a big list of improvements, ”said Kusmin. “It sounds like it’s a process that all startups run. But it’s amazing how many beginners do not talk to their users and do not observe their users using the product. I’m very happy that we’re really doing this so often.”
Kusmin said the team is working on improving the classroom multiplayer product a lot and it is also making regular changes to the home product. Last year, the company launched its monetization tests for the home game and it was successful.
Despite the fact that math is one of the most important subjects for building a career and future success, it is boring for children, even hated by them. Students’ poor math skills are a big problem when applying to college. Therefore, we are now focusing on further improving the 99 math platform for classroom use, and taking student excitement to the next level.
The company will add social features and new game design, enabling children to train specific math skills such as a mobile / video game, as well as to support the spirit of competition between friends in the application and the desire to win by solving math problems, Kusmin said.
“This is the year when we focus a little more on expanding the whole game or taking it to a whole new level,” Kusmin said.
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