NEW YORK (KMOX) -- Chuck Cohn started Varsity Tutors as a junior at Washington University. Tuesday, he got to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange as his start-up hit the big time, going public.
"It was definitely a surreal moment," he told KMOX right afterwards.
Cohn hopes Nerdy - whose main product is called Varsity Tutors - is the one to define and dominate virtual learning. The education tech company's cash reserves are now 10-times bigger thanks to the transaction.
"We've been building toward this moment for a very long time," he said, "and I feel like we're well positioned to grow for several years ahead and have a big impact on students."
That infusion of cash means Clayton-based Nerdy plans to more than double the size of its product, engineering, and data science team, which Cohn explained "is going to allow us to enhance the product capabilities and also pursue net new incremental initiatives; one we just announced was Varsity Tutors for Schools."
That new focus involves comprehensive deals with districts -- a potentially huge opportunity that Cohn hopes could double the size of the company.
"We have a couple of different products, ranging from one-on-one to five-on-one group tutoring that school administrators are able to roll out to hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of students at a time" and which include the company's adaptive machine learning technology.
17 districts are customers so far.
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Cohn says Nerdy and Varsity Tutors' other products, including individually-packaged tutoring and professional classes, are also showing strong numbers as students look to make up any pandemic learning loss.
He originally founded Varsity Tutors as part of an intro to entrepreneurship course while a junior at Wash. U. Now, it's worth more than a billion dollars.
"I'm very proud and I'm proud to call St. Louis home. We've been very fortunate to have many people and institutions throughout the city of St. Louis support us," he said.