Chegg has long been known as a textbook company, becoming one of the first companies to bring textbook rental online and reach widespread adoption. But with Amazon, Apple and others moving aggressively into the textbook market — and the market and textbooks themselves increasingly going digital — Chegg has been re-positioning. Today, the textbook company is eying EdTech’s Holy Grail of becoming… → Read More
An SEC filing surfaced this morning, showing that Chegg has made a yet unannounced acquisition for at least $1.1 million worth of common stock. The company that Chegg acquired is called Flux Software Co. according to the filing, or shortly ‘Flux’. To be clear, we’ve confirmed that Chegg did not purchase enterprise software company Flux.
We’ve confirmed with a Chegg spokesperson that, rather… → Read More
Exclusive – Students throughout the United States, rejoice, for Chegg is entering the daily deal space with Chegg Deals, courtesy of white-label group buying platform company Group Commerce.
The two companies have partnered to provide students nationwide discounts on everything from dorm room essentials to local restaurants, as well as textbooks and other educational resources. → Read More
As college students around the country start heading back to the dorms and purchasing their books for the semester, textbook rental giant Chegg is making major waves in the space with a number of new announcements. First off, Chegg is finally going digital, and is going to be steadily rolling e-textbooks on its platform with goal of offering millions of both print books and e-textbooks to students… → Read More
We’re hearing that online textbook rental service Chegg has completed its third acquisition today, snapping up lecture notes and study guides service Notehall for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock.
Chegg, which has received over $219 million in financing and hit revenues in the ballpark of $130 million in 2010, is also reportedly “deep in talks” with bankers regarding its plans to go… → Read More
Floodgate’s Mike Maples came in the studio yesterday to pre-tape an episode of Ask a VC, and while we had him here we picked his brain about the state of the venture industry. We started by talking about why his firm, Floodgate, is out of step with the broader Super Angel movement. Not only does Maples not believe you can make money through a spray-and-pray-and-flip approach, he doesn’t want to… → Read More
College textbook rental startup BookRenter has raised $40 million in funding from Adams Capital Management, Comerica Bank, Focus Ventures, Lighthouse Capital Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and Storm Ventures. This brings BookRenter’s total funding to $60 million.
Similar to Chegg, Bookrenter wants to be the Netflix of textbook rentals. By renting textbooks, Students are able to save money by… → Read More
Right about now, as college students across the country start to go back to school for the Spring semester, things are starting to pick up at Chegg’s 600,000 square foot warehouse in Shepherdsville, Kentucky. The warehouse sits right next to the main UPS shipping hub and across from a Zappos warehouse.
The textbook rental company sees its busiest times peak twice a year at the beginning of each… → Read More
When it comes to the quickly growing online textbook-rental market, Chegg is the young giant to beat. But its smaller competitor, Bookrenter, is making some impressive gains. If you look at traffic to each respective website, you can see spikes at the beginning of each semester (see chart above).
Last January, Bookrenter’s traffic was only 12.6 percent of Chegg’s, whereas by the August peak, it… → Read More
A few months ago, Borders got into the textbook sales race with the launch of a marketplace to buy and sell used books. Today, the company is getting into textbook rentals; partnering with rental giant Chegg to power a rental platform on Borders’ site. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed
Through the partnership, Borders’ customers have access to Chegg’s inventory of millions… → Read More
If you are a entrepreneur– especially a first time entrepreneur or an entrepreneur outside of Silicon Valley– you need to stop what you are doing and watch this video. Yes, it is 45 minutes long. But it’s worth it.
Last night at a Founder Institute event, super angel Mike Maples gave a talk about what he calls “pivots” and “thunder lizards.” Thunder lizards are startups born from atomic eggs… → Read More
Editor’s note: This post is the second part of an analysis of different consumer Internet business models by guest author Steven Carpenter. It is suggested that you first read Part I.
Most consumer Internet startups fall into a baker’s dozen of possible business models. In the first part of this post, I tried to lay out the three main buckets those business models fall into (media, paid service… → Read More
Textbook rental juggernaut Chegg raised another $75 million from a Hong Kong investment firm called Ace Limited. This new round, which is a series E, brings the total capital put into Chegg so far to $219 million. The company raised its last round of $57 million just last November.
Chegg rents textbooks to college students, which is a capital-intensive business, requiring warehouses, keeping… → Read More
Chegg’s textbook rental business continues to grow like crazy – we’ve estimated 2010 revenues of $130 million, for example. And the company is now starting to acquire businesses complimentary to their core focus. First up is CourseRank, founded in 2007 by three stanford students. Total funding raised by CourseRank is $0 – it’s “Mountain Dew funded to date,” says Chegg.
CourseRank helps students… → Read More
Editor’s note: Book rental startup Chegg is making money hand over fist. Guest author Steven Carpenter does a teardown of its business model and estimates its revenues will reach $130 million this year. Carpenter was the founder and CEO of Cake Financial, which was sold to E*Trade earlier this year. Previously, he’s written TC Teardowns on Groupon and Zynga.
Chegg may very well be the… → Read More
Who exactly is the market leader in textbook rentals is no longer just an academic debate. Online textbook rental service Chegg recently sent its rival BookRenter.co a lawyer letter (embedded below) demanding that it stop using the phrase “#1 In Textbook Rentals” on its Website. That is Chegg’s marketing slogan, and it even registered the phrase as a trademark in 2008.
But how can a company… → Read More
It’s not often that you hear about a startup still in deep stealth that has over 40 employees and backing from some of the biggest names in the valley. But that’s exactly the case for Santa Clara-based Kakai, which was founded in May by Chegg founder Osman Rashid. The company has recently closed a $7.5 million Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Josh Kopelman… → Read More
Earlier this month college textbook rental company Chegg raised $112M as part of a combined Series D and debt round, bringing the total raised by the company to a massive $144M. Competitor BookRenter will tomorrow announce a Series A round of $6M, raised from Storm Ventures and Adams Capital Management. BookRenter has only raised a fraction of the capital of their competitor Chegg, but the… → Read More
Confirming in part our initial report last month, Chegg has announced that it has closed a Series C funding round led by famed venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to the tune of $25 million. The round also saw participation from Foundation Capital along with existing investors Gabriel Venture Partners and Primera Capital, who likely helped boost the round beyond the $15… → Read More
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