Perlego is a Startup that wants to become the Spotify for Textbooks

Perlego is a Startup that wants to become the Spotify for Textbooks

Perlego is applying the Spotify concept to stream whatever you want, through a subscription model to academic textbooks. The high cost of textbooks is something that students know all too well. A survey from 2020 by Public Interest Research Group in the U.S. found 65% of college students reported that they held off from buying school textbooks because of the prices. 

“The market for educational content has lagged other types of content, which have successfully digitized and offered new models of consumption to users. We believe that adoption of an online subscription model in this category is inevitable, and that Perlego’s platform and business model will lead the education industry in this digital shift,” said Elizabeth Brillman, VC partner at Raine Ventures, in a statement. “We are excited to partner with Gauthier and the entire Perlego team in this journey.”

Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis founded the company in 2017 and decided to build a platform to address what they felt was an issue for students: the very high cost of textbooks.

“This was a pain point of mine,” Van Malderen said, recalling how he would typically pay £200-£300 for a single book, only to “read one assigned chapter and then never use it again.” It was not unlike how you might want to hear a few songs but not a full album by a recording artist. “So I thought, surely a subscription model would work here.”

The London startup has 400,000 paying subscribers who get all-you-can-read access to approximately 850,000 titles, textbooks, fiction and other literature that students are assigned as coursework at universities or other higher-learning institutions. Perlego has picked up $50 million to expand its business after seeing its platform boom through Covid-19.