Nas Academy, a global education platform that empowers creators to build their own academy, has raised $11 million in a Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Other investors including TechAviv Founder Partners, 500 Startups, Graph Ventures, FreshFund, Metapurse, Balaji Srinivasan, Coinbase President Emilie Choi, OYO Founder Ritesh Agarwal, content creator Markian, and the founders of Jellysmack also participated in the round.
The startup plans to use the new funding to fuel its mission to continue building tools that will help creators architect the best academies for students, expanding their network of creator partners and strategic partners, and making the platform’s content accessible to every person in the world, according to a press statement by the company.
Founded in 2020 by Nuseir Yassin, the creator of Nas Daily – known for its one-minute videos on Facebook, Nas Academy allows creators to set up an academy in just a few easy steps on its platform. It allows creators to create a new course, market to students, get discovered, and interact with classrooms full of virtual students who want to learn from them. The platform’s founding and leadership team, who are experienced creators themselves, help onboard, coach, and grow the ‘academies’.
Speaking about the platform, Nuseir Yassin said in a statement,
“Nas Academy was born out of a problem I faced. If a creator wants to teach, they need to use multiple services, figure out marketing, and spend a lot of time and effort to build a learning experience. With our support and platform, we make it super easy and straightforward to turn a YouTuber into a ‘professor’.”
Nas Academy’s mission is to empower creators to share their knowledge. Unlike other EdTech platforms, it is built for the modern creator, supporting them with curriculum development, marketing, and community management. Learning on Nas Academy is entirely classroom-based. Students from around the world learn together in batches and interact with each other directly on the platform through a learning portal, WhatsApp Group, Zoom sessions with a trainer, and individual sessions with the creator.
Commenting on the funding, Akshay Bhushan, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said,
“We’re excited to back Nas Academy which sits at the rapidly emerging intersection of education tech and the creator economy. New media is increasingly dominated by creators and Nuseir & team, having been successful creators themselves, are uniquely positioned to enable creators to become educators to teach and monetize their respective crafts.”
Since its inception, Nas Academy has hosted 250 cohorts of full courses covering topics such as the art of storytelling, growing your social media presence, building a camera presence, the anatomy of a viral video, and more. The platform claims to have helped several well-known creators, including Smile Squad, Dear Alyne, and MingWeiRocks, launch their academies and generate millions in revenue.
