Estonian ed-tech startup Clanbeat raises $ 1,2 M led by Taizo Son & Mistletoe to fuel expansion

Clanbeat is excited to announce the closure of $ 1,2 M funding from Mistletoe Inc and angel investors Martin Henk and Ragnar Sass. The funds will be used to support the development of a platform focused on assisting the growth of people as self-driven learners and expansion to new markets.

A world with increasingly complex challenges that need to be solved requires us all to raise our learning skills like never before. Most contemporary education systems have established their goals around self-driven learners. Clanbeat is developing a holistic software that supports students and adults in mastering driving their own learning and being a well balanced human being along that journey.

Clanbeat’s vision is to support personal growth through building human agency and community support. First focus on that journey has been helping schools to be growth-orientated and inspiring workplaces. By helping to design a humane employee experience through increasing engagement and cooperation, supporting HR processes from onboarding to growth and helping to reach better results through leadership that is focused on individual and collegial growth.

Driven by insights and requests from our current customers — moving on from being a growth tool for adults — Clanbeat has set its focus to reimagine how technology can assist students in mastering their skills as self-driven learners. Inspired by the potential of supporting people in an age where they are most able to develop efficient learning practices, we decided to focus on this challenge.

Building on our first successful pilots and a co-creative process with our student, teacher and school leadership partners, our goal is to launch an upgrade to Clanbeat platform in spring 2020 and take a grand leap in offering our solution to many more schools around the world.

We want to further assist teachers in noticing each student’s individual needs and schools to offer individual growth journeys designed around every person. There are many innovative schools in the world developing their practices for it, but it is complex, time-consuming and would benefit from technical aid. That’s where Clanbeat comes in. The software is created in co-creation with the real users.

Clanbeat Education was founded in 2018 by Kadri Tuisk with partners: Tiina Pauklin, Christjan Schumann and Triin Noorkõiv. Currently, Clanbeat has a team of 7. Located in Tallinn, Estonia. Client base in Northern Europe and SE Asia.

The solution in its core is a personalised growth assistant tool for students and teachers. It includes features for: onboarding to school processes and community, individual learning set up & support and personal growth journey planning.

Importantly, these features are supported by others that foster safety, community feeling and create positive habits for people to fuel their growth.

Taizo Son, the Founder of Mistletoe Inc is the lead investor in this round, with incredible values match from first sight. He and his fund are truly investing in companies that are here to create a better future for the world. In their portfolio there are other ed-tech startups like Classting and ClassDo. They have also founded Vivita — a makerspace for the kids to develop individual thinking and creativity, carrying the values close to Clanbeat Education.

The first angel investor, Pipedrive co-founder, Martin Henk is a true partner being part of our journey since the beginning and offering a helping hand beyond common investor’s role. His extensive knowledge in building products that scale is truly valuable and his passion for education has given us a very good running start from day one.

Ragnar Sass, co-founder of Pipedrive, Lift99 and Salto Network was one of the initial founders of Clanbeat in the early days and has been standing behind a new generation of start-ups with all his heart. His passion, knowledge and energy for supporting start-ups is something we like to call a force of nature.

Last but not least, Clanbeat’s investor-in-time — our advisor — Kathleen Naglee, the Head of School at International School of Helsinki — has been of tremendous help in unlocking the needs of international schools and the ecosystem. Her invaluable insights have contributed to understanding the modern students and the real needs and pains from the schools’ side, pushing the team to target new heights. As our way of working is co-creation, we are excited to continue working very closely with Kathleen and her Finnish and international colleagues