“Layoffs at pivoting London ed tech startup pi-top” @getpitop #makerbusiness
We are a backer of this Kickstarter, and resell the pi-top Laptop, so this story was of interest … More layoffs at pivoting London ed tech startup pi-top by TechCrunch.
“We have made changes within the company that reflect our business focus on the U.S. education market and our increasingly important SaaS learning platform.”
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…”earlier this year, pi-top appointed a new executive chairman of its board who has a strong U.S. focus: Stanley Buchesky served in the Trump administration as an interim CFO for the U.S. Department of Education under Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.”
“Last month pi-top announced it had taken in $4 million in additional investment to fund the planned pivot to SaaS — and “bridge towards profitability,” as it put it today.”
Total funding amount according to Crunchbase is: $24.6M. In September 2019, $4m.
“The plan now is for pi-top to monetize that software platform by charging subscription fees for elements of the service — with the ultimate goal of SaaS revenues making up the bulk of its business as hardware sales are de-emphasized. (Hardware is hard; and pi-top’s current STEM learning flagship has faced some challenges with reliability, as we reported in August.) We understand that the strategic change to Further — from free to a subscription service — was communicated to staff internally in September.”