We're so excited to welcome Serena Ventures and Swell Partners to the Fiveable fam.
We've been talking about our broken education system for decades, but the system is not actually broken. It's working as intended. We're just fed up.
Institutions like College Board hold a lot of power over students and actively preserve inequities. AP is a symbol of this power with their pre-reqs, tracking, colonized curriculum, and costly exams at $95 a pop.
That's why we have centered APs at Fiveable. It's not about test-prep, it's about educational justice through online communities.
We've seen the power of digital mass movements in politics and stock markets. Education is next. It's been budding for decades with teacher Facebook groups and student subreddits. Online communities share resources, motivate each other, and can overcome institutional barriers.
Fiveable is the next generation of social learning, where we are building a high school community that will fight for each other.
Today, we're excited to announce additional investors that will help us build this vision including Serena Williams ala Serena Ventures and Swell Partners.
"What impresses us most about Fiveable is how well they understand and are immersed in today’s students; that’s what initially piqued our interest. The way they’ve brought students in to help guide their roadmap is unlike anything I’ve seen,” said Serena Williams, founder of Serena Ventures. “Based on their growth in users and engagement, it’s evident that their social learning community has cracked the code on peer-to-peer learning.”
Our approach to social learning is to meet students right where they are — and this has led to more than half a million AP students studying with us in just the last 30 days. 👀
It's all of us versus the exam.
We've created open-sourced study guides for every unit in all 38 AP subjects. These were written and edited by students and teachers to be shared with everyone.
We host an active Discord server where students from around the world build study groups and connect in affinity channels like #creative-writing, #lgbtq, and the #afrocommunity. There are always other students experiencing the same thing at the same time.
Cram season brings the best teachers in front of tens of thousands of students for last minute live reviews and pep talks. This style of one-to-many streaming is fun, interactive, and helps everyone feel a little less alone.
This community of students has the power to change everything. We're just creating space.
This latest funding brings our total raised to just over $4.2 million since the winter of 2019. These funds have allowed us to grow our team in preparation for our largest cram season ever.
We're just getting started. Follow the adventure @thinkfiveable.
.png)
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
