Participated · Equity · Oct 2024

Perlego operates a subscription-based digital library providing access to over one million academic, professional and non-fiction titles. The company has signed partnerships with thousands of publisher brands globally to populate its library. It is used by students worldwide and sells access via a recurring subscription model. Perlego was founded in 2017 by CEO Gauthier Van Malderen and is based in London, UK. The company plans to use new funding to expand internationally and to develop AI-driven products, including Dialogo, an AI-powered research assistant. Its most recent round brought total funding to date to $75M. Perlego operates a textbook-subscription platform that gives paying users unlimited access to textbooks, fiction and other course materials. It currently has 400,000 paying subscribers and a catalogue of about 850,000 titles, which the company says makes it the largest online textbook subscription service. Perlego works with roughly 5,000 education publishers, including Cengage, Routledge, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier and Harvard University Press, and is linked with 6,000 institutions across 172 countries; about 40% of its students are in the U.S. The company saw rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic (450% subscriber growth in 2021) and says its catalogue rose 166% in the last year and by more than 500,000 titles since 2019. Consumer pricing is £12/month in the U.K. ($18 in the U.S.) with an annual plan that averages £8/month ($12/month) and a two-week free trial; publishers receive roughly 65% of subscription revenues plus additional consumption-based commissions. Product plans include building an ecosystem for course material (annotations, shared libraries, instructor tools), exploring premium tiers and potentially selling physical copies, while the company rejects ad-supported models. Perlego is a London-based textbook subscription service that gives students and professionals access to a large digital library across web, iOS and Android. It houses over 300,000 eBooks from more than 2,300 publishers, including Pearson, Wiley and Sage, and offers content in multiple languages with publishers from Germany, the Nordics and Italy. Professionals comprise about 30% of users, and Perlego reports a 116% month-on-month increase in new subscribers, though it does not disclose total subscriber numbers. In the U.K. the service is priced at £12 per month for access to the full digital library and is positioned as a "Spotify for textbooks" to address high textbook costs and piracy. Perlego says the new funding will be used to build the next-generation "smarter learning platform," add features that simplify and enhance learning, and expand content libraries in non-English languages. The company intends to use these additions to support expansion into strategic European markets beyond its U.K. roots. Perlego provides students and professionals unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of academic and professional eBook titles for £12 a month. The service works with around 650 publishers, including Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press, Macmillan Higher Education, and Cengage Learning. Publishers receive 65% of each subscription on a consumption basis, and Perlego supplies publishers with detailed data on title consumption. The company says its model helps monetise content for price-sensitive students, reduce piracy, and avoid cannibalisation of second-hand print sales. Founded by Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis, Perlego has joined the Founders Factory edtech accelerator backed by Holtzbrinck Macmillan. It plans to use new funding to grow the team, expand across the U.K. and Europe, and further develop its product for students and professionals. Perlego is a London-based e-book platform that offers academic and professional e-books through a monthly subscription. The company has partnered with over 240 publishers and offers more than 85,000 e-books to date. Founded by Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis, Perlego focuses on making academic and professional content available via subscription. The company intends to use newly raised funds to grow the team, expand publishing partnerships, and continue developing the platform. Financially, Perlego secured £500K in seed funding from private angels in the UK, Belgium and France, including investor Simon Franks.