PROVIDENCE – The Slater Technology Fund, a local nonprofit seed fund for business ventures, has invested $25,000 in GoPeer, a Providence-based “e-learning” startup, as part of a $265,000 round of seed funding, the group announced.
Founded in 2017 by recent Lafayette College graduate Ethan Binder, GoPeer has developed an online platform that taps an available yet underutilized labor force of college students to provide online tutoring for younger students, from kindergarten through high school.
It’s Okay Not to Be Okay: Why We Need to Talk About Maternal Mental Health
Q&A with Megin Dalton, MD, Center for Women’s Health at South County Health Each May,…
Learn More
GoPeer provides the tutoring at one-third of the national average cost of professional tutoring, according to Slater.
Binder also is a graduate of Social Enterprise Greenhouse’s Impact Accelerator program and was a member of the MassChallenge Rhode Island 2018 and the MassChallenge Boston 2019 cohorts of entrepreneurs.
Together with GoPeer co-founders Zura Mestiashvili and Erik Laucks, Binder developed and refined the company’s “SaaS” technology and mobile app, and also recruited college students to offer their tutoring services.
Today, GoPeer has more than 3,257 college student users and 1,224 kindergarten through high school students have used the services, according to Slater.
“Having had the opportunity in local ecosystem settings to watch Ethan and his team refine the company’s technology, customer experience, and go-to-market so relentlessly, I was delighted when he decided to locate his company here in Providence,” said Slater Managing Director Thorne Sparkman.
The nonprofit did not provide other information about its current round of funding.
“This seed-round investment from Slater will support our efforts to bring affordable and personalized tutoring to students who need to reach their full academic potential,” Binder said in a statement.
Scott Blake is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Blake@PBN.com.
