If you didn’t know better, you might have mistaken the crowd for a cult. As many as 2,000 people dressed in white had descended on MetaStadt, a venue in Vienna, to spend a day drinking, dancing, and partying.
After signing a mandatory code of conduct that forbid them from taking photos or doing drugs, staffers were treated to food trucks, a body-painting station, a tattoo artist, a motocross show, and two stages with DJs. The party stretched well into the evening; at one point, a group of dancing dwarves took the stage.
Less than two weeks later, the company closed its Swedish office and laid off 21 Swedish employees — the first of several rounds of layoffs over the next six months that would affect about 25% of GoStudent’s staff worldwide. “There was a lot of confusion about having an ostentatious display of wealth then having layoffs,” a former employee said.
The company, which first billed itself as the go-to online-tutoring platform for students from kindergarten to high school, had scaled rapidly to become Europe’s highest-valued edtech startup, backed by heavy hitters like SoftBank and Coatue. At its peak, GoStudent employed just over 2,000 people and served 24 countries. The startup was a point of pride for the European tech scene, which has long operated in the shadow of Silicon Valley. But 28 current and former GoStudent employees and tutors said they experienced a poorly run organization with clumsy management.
GoStudent, they said, promoted a party culture and had lax standards for vetting tutors. One father discovered his daughter’s tutor was a teacher who’d been fired from his school for exchanging nudes with a teenage pupil. “The worst thing I thought would be an incompetent teacher,” the father told Insider. “I’m still in shock.” (Most people spoke under the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. Their identities are known to Insider.)
Ohswald and Müller expanded GoStudent across North America, South America, and Europe in just two years. For venture-capital-backed startups, rapid growth is what gets investors’ attention — and money. Edtech companies “rarely have any major competitive advantage other than scale,” a European venture capitalist who’s not affiliated with GoStudent said.
However, simply growing as fast as possible is “not a sustainable business model,” the European venture capitalist said. It also makes it harder to keep track of what kinds of safety measures are in place. The lack of consistent regulation at edtech companies can be dangerous for children, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, the president of the German Teachers’ Association, told Insider, adding, “with online platforms like GoStudent, there will always be a risk.”
GoStudent’s attorneys said the company “grew rapidly in response to immense popularity” and “acknowledges and regrets that mistakes have been made along the way. However, it believes that it has also been quick to learn from those mistakes and to strengthen its processes and procedures in order to make sure that, so far as possible, they are not repeated.” They added that Insider’s allegations “do not paint a picture of our client that is fair or representative of the company as it stands today.”
The earliest iteration of GoStudent consisted of text messages: Students would text a phone number with homework questions, and cofounders Müller and Ohswald would respond. The duo officially founded GoStudent in 2016, when they were 21 and 23, respectively, with the help of an electrical engineer, Ferdinand von Hagen, who served as chief technology officer until 2017 and still owned shares in the company as of October 2022.
The company then developed a chat app where students could message with tutors. It pivoted to video-based tutoring in 2018 and launched subscription packages the following year. When someone signed up for the service, a GoStudent employee created a WhatsApp chat with themselves, a tutor, and the student (if the student was under 16, their parent or guardian was added instead). The student and the tutor would then set up a time to meet on the video-conferencing app Zoom. This year, GoStudent implemented an in-house video platform called GoClass.
Ohswald, a math wiz who went to college at 14, is the face of the company — the flashy one with a blonde bun whom a former employee characterized as “charismatic” and “pleasant” and described as once wearing head-to-toe Prada. Müller, on the other hand, mostly operated behind the scenes and kept to himself.
GoStudent’s founders initially wanted to emulate WeWork’s culture, a different ex-staffer said. In its earlier years, the company had a number of guiding principles called GoStudent “fundamentals,” one of which was “work hard, play hard,” two ex-staffers said. Employees in the Vienna, London, and France offices said Fridays were seen as party days at the company, which one former employee said made for a “good spirit.”
In December 2021, Ohswald and Müller took a group of staffers to dinner and a burlesque show at The Windmill, a cabaret in Soho, London. The following October, GoStudent rented out the bottom deck of Tamesis Dock, a bar on a boat permanently moored on the River Thames in London, and Müller bought a round of tequila shots for about 40 staffers who were there.
A former employee said they got the impression that Ohswald and Müller “wanted to have a lot of fun.” “You do actually need to have efficient processes, support, benefits — not just free booze on Fridays,” the former employee said. (They and two other former employees cited tech issues with billing and software systems that weren’t resolved during their tenure.)
GoStudent denied that the founders “have promoted and encouraged a problematic company culture related to partying and alcohol consumption.” They added that “it would be fair to say that in the company’s early years it embraced a celebratory culture, however it has since rolled out a set of company values which are reflective of the company’s maturity.”
When COVID-19 hit, GoStudent capitalized on the fact that people were stuck in their homes. The company started in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), but by spring 2022, it had just over 2,000 employees worldwide.
Before the pandemic, 20% of people who didn’t sign up for GoStudent after a free trial said it was because they preferred an in-person tutor, Ohswald said at a 2021 conference. After the COVID lockdowns, he added, that figure fell to 2%. The pandemic was also helpful when it came to hiring tutors; applications jumped because hospitality workers found themselves looking for online jobs, Ohswald said, which meant GoStudent could be more selective and make better hires for the same amount of money.
But while more people were willing to try online tutoring, general demand “plummeted” because families were overwhelmed and schools had fewer exams, Ohswald said. As a result, he added, GoStudent had to more than double the amount of money it spent on attracting new customers.
In order to expand, GoStudent snapped up other, similar startups, including a Spanish tutoring platform and a UK remote-learning company. But some markets didn’t pan out. For example, GoStudent opened an office in Sweden in 2021 — an ambitious play given that tutoring is not normalized in Sweden the way it is in other countries. The next year, the office shut down. GoStudent said that it entered the Swedish market understanding that “tutoring in Sweden is less common than in certain other European countries,” but decided to close due to “lower than expected demand” and a cooling European economy.
GoStudent also struggled in the US due in part to the same sluggish economy, one former employee said, as well as heavy competition in the tutoring space. Another former employee felt that the company did not appreciate the legal nuances of expanding across multiple states, which GoStudent denied, saying that the US expansion was “handled by a dedicated team” that considered local legalities.
In the company’s early days, some former employees described a generally positive environment. “Everybody was passionate and enjoyed what they were doing. It wasn’t an issue to work longer hours,” one said, adding that it’s typical at startups to “give 100%.”
Then, a year into the pandemic, GoStudent was suddenly inundated with cash, raising around $80 million in March 2021 and another $244 million that June. With major investors like SoftBank and Coatue involved, things at the company started to change. People who worked at GoStudent between 2020 and 2023 described a grueling environment. Sales staffers who were part of the same team were in direct competition with each other, a former employee said, and some sales employees in the UK started working on Saturdays to meet their targets.
As with most startups, GoStudent’s pandemic-era growth eventually plateaued, and the company started to lay people off. Each wave of departures added to the pressure, one former staffer said.
One former GoStudent staffer in France took the country manager to the French labor court, Conseil de prud’hommes, in 2022, alleging violation of workers’ rights, two people told Insider. (The court documents are confidential as the case is ongoing.) Former employees described the manager as “very controlling” and “horrible,” and three other former staffers said he intimated to employees that burnout was not allowed.
“He’s very good at manipulation,” an employee who worked directly with the manager said. “When I decided to leave, it was because it was unbearable.”
GoStudent said it “values its employees and strives to foster a sense of community and teamwork,” noting that, since the pandemic, it had “invested considerably in its culture, including new core values, a global culture day, and new employee benefits.”
As GoStudent expanded, safety precautions sometimes fell by the wayside.
In France, tutors were not asked about their criminal history until 2021; starting that year, applicants could confirm they had no criminal record by checking a box on the website, two former employees said.
GoStudent said,”Whilst it is correct that tutors in France are required to check a box to confirm they are permitted to work with children, it would be false to suggest that this is (or ever has been) the only security check on prospective tutors.” GoStudent said that tutors in France now “must upload an up-to-date criminal record.” Before this measure went into place, tutors were vetted “via open-source searches.”
Anthony Canavan, a teacher in the UK, was banned from the classroom in 2018 after an investigation found he’d exchanged nudes and discussed having sex with a former teenage pupil. But in 2021, he signed up for GoStudent under a false name, according to documents seen by Insider. He reverted to his real name after being approved to join the platform.
In March 2021, Canavan was assigned to tutor a then 15-year-old girl. The girl’s father had signed her up for GoStudent to boost her confidence and academic performance, both of which had taken a beating during the pandemic. At her “lowest point ever,” the teen was self-harming and depressed, the father told Insider.
Before his daughter’s first session, the father Googled Canavan’s name — and was shocked at the results. He emailed GoStudent, and the company removed Canavan from the platform and said they would report him to police for seeking employment with minors. A representative also replied to the father explaining that British law didn’t require Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service, or DBS, checks, which flag all police records, for GoStudent tutors. “Technically my daughter could sit there for months being groomed,” the father said, “and I would be none the wiser.”
Ohswald himself also emailed the father and invited him to GoStudent’s Vienna office. The company offered no further apology or compensation, the father said. GoStudent implemented DBS checks for its UK tutors that year, partly in response to the Canavan debacle. “Student safety has always been an important priority,” GoStudent said. “However, our client does acknowledge that when it entered the UK market, the Enhanced DBS Check process that it now operates should ideally have been established sooner.”
Technically my daughter could sit there for months being groomed, and I would be none the wiser.The father of a teenager who used GoStudent
In some cases, even comprehensive vetting may not have prevented people from abusing the platform. In August 2022, news broke that a 31-year-old tutor had used GoStudent to solicit nude photos from a 15-year-old Austrian boy. GoStudent acknowledged the incident and removed the tutor. The tutor was then investigated “on suspicion of abusing a relationship of authority and demanding pornographic content from minors,” the Austrian publication Brutkasten reported. Norbert Wess, the lawyer representing the student’s family at the time, told Insider the case is ongoing and has been moved to Germany, where the tutor is based.
In at least three other instances between 2020 to 2022, tutors were kicked off the platform for flirting with underage students, three former employees said. In July 2021, another tutor was booted for trying to coerce a student he’d been working with for six months into paying for his European visa via text, said a former GoStudent employee.
GoStudent’s policies didn’t necessarily deter bad actors. Students younger than 16 were sometimes added to WhatsApp chats with tutors at their parents’ request, meaning tutors had access to teens’ personal cellphone numbers. As of 2021, GoStudent did not check tutors’ IDs in multiple markets outside of the UK, current and former employees said, adding that if a tutor was kicked off the platform, they could theoretically use a fake name to sign up and be approved to join again. Even tutors raised concerns that “anyone” could sign up to work with children on the platform. An ex-GoStudent employee said it seemed like the company “didn’t want to put the resources into figuring out how to stop” potential abuse.
“Sometimes you might say, ‘It’s a new market; these are new challenges; this came as a surprise for us,'” the European investor said. But companies that connect people — especially children — should know to prioritize safety. These issues “are not new,” the investor added, pointing to Uber’s troubles vetting its drivers.
In its letter to Insider, GoStudent said that “over the last 18 months, GoStudent has invested in enhanced safeguarding processes, procedures and resources — including secure and trusted safeguarding software and a dedicated, trained team of Safety Officers to manage all safeguarding matters via the GoStudent Safety Centre. Furthermore, GoStudent initiated a robust background check process this year, whereby all tutors in all markets must now submit a valid criminal record check, even if this goes beyond local legal requirements.”
As the economic environment in Europe shifted amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so did the mood at GoStudent. Meetings, once dominated by announcements of sales and new offices, often brought news of spending cuts, three former employees said. (GoStudent denied this characterization.)
In early 2022, more than 300 GoStudent tutors signed a petition complaining that the company had paid them late and was slow to fire tutors who were underperforming. A GoStudent employee threatened to track down the petition’s author using tutors’ IP addresses, according to the German publication Handelsblatt. (GoStudent denied this.)
Leadership assured staffers that everything was under control — the founders always tried to stay positive, two former employees and one current employee told Insider — but GoStudent’s Swedish office closed in June 2022, laying off around 21 employees, and 28 people in the French office were let go the next month. Even as jobs were cut, three former staffers said GoStudent held a competition for top-performing employees to win a company-sponsored trip to Ibiza.
That September, GoStudent’s US office, which had opened five months earlier, closed; US tutors were told the day of, according to an email seen by Insider. The company honored its existing contracts, meaning tutors could complete their prebooked sessions. Overall, the wave of layoffs affected at least 200 people.
In the midst of the layoffs, GoStudent hired a fresh round of talent. The former Delivery Hero exec Duncan McIntyre was brought on as the company’s new chief finance officer in March 2022. “We got the CFO, and he was like, ‘Fucking hell, you have no idea how to spend money,'” a former employee said, adding that McIntyre met with the French investment firm Eurazeo that June in a failed bid to secure Series F funding. Neel Gupta, of Deliveroo and SoftBank, was hired as McIntyre’s chief of staff, and Anna Tuchy, who had worked at JP Morgan and Barclays, was brought on as head of investor relations — a move usually taken before a company goes public. In December, GoStudent acquired the German in-person tutoring company Studienkreis.
But the new hires and acquisitions weren’t enough to right the ship. In mid-December, GoStudent slashed head count again, cutting around 220 of Austria’s 490 employees. People were “shell-shocked,” the current employee said.
According to public documents updated in December 2022, GoStudent had shrunk to 15 markets and 1,500 employees, including its acquisitions. GoStudent said that year’s economic climate forced the company to “reevaluate its plans” and restructure “significantly.”
In January, staffers in Vienna established a workes’ council, which is similar to a union. GoStudent said it “fully supports its employees’ decision to form such a council and is actively working with the counsel now that it is in place.”
Some staffers, who have endured multiple waves of layoffs and unmet promises of employee benefits, no longer trust Ohswald and Müller to lead GoStudent. “It’s hard for us to still believe in both of them as our heads of company,” a current employee said.
And again, the workload intensified. “There was no human element to this,” one former staffer said. “It just felt like we were robots.”
In August, the company collected another $95 million in equity and debt funding led by Deutsche Bank to fuel its use of artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The company is building out a VR language-learning platform and a tool that will let tutors create lesson plans using AI, TechCrunch reported.
There was no human element to this. It just felt like we were robots.A former GoStudent employee
One former employee who’d worked at the company since 2021 said she saw a lot of the product developments related to video tutoring sidelined as GoStudent pooled its resources into AI and VR. “They wanted to bring VR into schools, but teachers have laughed at the notion of doing that,” she said. “Who’s going to buy them? Who’s going to maintain them?” But another insider said GoStudent’s AI play has breathed new life into the company by making it more attractive to investors.
Education experts like those at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development see these technologies as a double-edged sword, noting that they have to be implemented carefully in order to have a positive impact.
In the world of VC-backed startups, “move fast and break things” is a core mantra. Such companies are touted as disruptors, proving to the old guard that there’s a new and better way of doing things. But GoStudent’s initial “aggressive methods” and lack of safety checks have shaken people’s trust in the edtech industry, said Patrick Nadler, the CEO of a competing startup, Tutorspace, who sued GoStudent for anti-competitive practices in spring 2022. (The case is ongoing, with a hearing before the Oberlandesgericht Köln set for late October, according to court documents.) “Disruption is not irresponsibility,” Nadler added.
Additional reporting by Sarah Heuberger and Ross Slater.
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