Coding school startup Cypher has closed a seed funding round of approx. €492K, with the majority from 313 investors via crowdfunding platform Seedrs. The investment puts Cypher at a valuation of around €6.8 million.
Cypher was founded in 2016 by tech entrepreneur Elizabeth Tweedale, who we interviewed recently about building the next generation of coders. Cypher offers creatively themed coding courses for children aged 6 to 12 with the aim of inspiring children to learn coding, computational thinking, problem solving and communication.
Using the crowdfunding platform Seedrs allowed the coding school to bring in a broad range of investors to reflect their new global offering and product, following their successful business pivot to an online offering during the pandemic last year.
The recent raise will go towards continuing investment in platform development, making key hires for the business and expanding the startup’s reach across the UK, US and globally. Cypher is launching a brand new subscription service in the US in September, whereby children can start with Cypher at age six, and by the time they reach age 12 they will be technically literate, competent across multiple coding languages, as well as having learnt about healthy screen time, looking after their mental health and online safety. This is the beginning of building an all encompassing technological education for the next generation.
Elizabeth Tweedale, CEO and founder of Cypher, said: “Although a sudden transition, the last year has allowed us to accelerate and develop our online offering, reaching thousands of children from 21 countries globally to help teach them coding, the language of the future workforce. This funding round helps us to finalise the development of our subscription offering. Cypher has recently become a STEM accredited provider alongside companies like Apple & Disney. The development of our proprietary curriculum via a monthly subscription, where children can attend a class every week across multiple coding languages and creative themes, with access to a dedicated teacher, opens up coding to many more children globally.“