London-based School of Everything has secured a round of seed investment to the tune of £350,000. The investors are Web veteran Esther Dyson, Swiss investor Rocco Pellegrinelli, British Telecom’s JP Rangaswami and Channel 4 Education. The Young Foundation – which helped incubate the startup – also invested in this round. Rangaswami and Pellegrinelli will join CEO Paul Miller, COO Andy Gibson and Andrew Brough from the Young Foundation on the board. Rangaswami becomes chairman alongside his BT role.
The site was a startup in the Seedcamp competition last year but was not one of the finalists, depsite most observers I recall liking the idea, team and early execution. They launched an alpha site last year. The site matches up people who want to learn with teachers who can teach them. Whether it’s yoga or languages, music or blogging 101, teachers can sign up to teach anything – as long as it’s legal.