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Memrise raises $1mm to reinvent learning

Memrise, a Techstars Boston 2011 startup, is announcing today that it has closed a $1.05mm round to develop their online learning platform. A distinguished roster of investors are on board, including Avalon Ventures, Balderton Capital, Matt Mullenweg's Audrey Capital and Lerer Ventures. They're joined by a host of angels including Nabeel Hyatt, former head of Zynga Boston, Jeff Hammerbacher, former head of data at Facebook, and Bill Warner, founder of Avid.

Memrise was founded by Greg Detre, who has a PhD in neuroscience from Princeton, and Ed Cooke, the memory Grandmaster who taught the journalist Josh Foer to win the US memory championships in a year. It brings together the most powerful ideas from the science and practice of learning with game dynamics to help people learn in the quickest and most enjoyable way possible. "There's all this wonderful science of learning and memory that's never seen the light of day in education" says co-founder Greg Detre "A big part of our mission is to harness that knowledge".

Just as important are the community and game elements on Memrise. Words, mnemonic devices and images are are continuously created and curated by the community, and learning is social- with friendly competition between community members to incentivise learning. Meanwhile, the process of learning is itself a game- with every memory beginning life as a seed and being gradually watered and nurtured to health in a garden of memory.

"Memrise wants to change not just the way people learn, but the reason they choose to do so in the first place" says Cooke. "People think of learning instrumentally- as something you do for school or your career. We think that's boring and counter-productive, and we want to re-invent it as a recreational activity- as something you'd do instead of watching TV, surfing the web or playing World of Warcraft."

The bulk of Memrise's content is currently for foreign languages and SAT vocabulary- and more than a million words across more than a hundred languages have been learned already on the platform. The long-term aim is to crowd-source learning materials on just about any topic imaginable. A recent collaboration with the Guardian newspaper hints at what's to come, with lessons that teach different kinds of herbs, cheese and tropical fish, among other plants and animals.

For the moment, the focus remains languages, and with the $1mm raise Memrise intends to continue to develop their language-learning content and tools, adding mobile apps and more languages.