Bootstrapped
Teachers & schools
2013
Freemium model
EdTech
Four university friends formed Kami (initially called Notable PDF) and in 2019 raised NZ$1.5 million in a seed round led by Right Click Capital.
Students and teachers adopted Kami’s document annotation tools; the product integrated with Google Classroom and expanded rapidly during global shifts to remote learning.
Startup Rollercoaster
The Spark
In 2013, University of Auckland students Hengjie Wang, Jordan Thoms, and Alliv Samson (later joined by Bob Drummond) created a document-annotation tool called Notable PDF.
The Peak
In January 2019, Kami raised NZ$1.5 million in a seed round led by Right Click Capital, having over six million users in more than 130 countries.
By September 2021, Kami had reached 27 million users worldwide.
The Drop
Kami faced technical scaling challenges during the COVID-19 surge: their PostgreSQL infrastructure strained as user growth exceeded capacity.
Monetisation was also difficult, as many features were offered free to support schools during the pandemic.
The Reset
Kami introduced premium and tiered pricing for schools and educators to build sustainable revenue.
They also migrated workloads to scalable systems such as CockroachDB to improve reliability and performance.
The Discipline
The company strengthened customer support, invested in reliability and accessibility, and built feedback loops with teachers and students to guide product improvements.
The Climb
Driven by the shift to remote learning, Kami’s user base jumped from about 8 million to 22 million in 2020, reaching 27 million by 2021.
By late 2021, Kami was used in more than 180 countries and had surpassed 30 million users.
Read more
- https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2021/09/03/edtech-company-kami-reaches-27-million-users.html
- https://startupdaily.net/topic/auckland-edutech-startup-kami-raises-nz1-5-million-round-led-right-click-capital/
- https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/kami-gives-all-staff-a-10000-bonus-donates-to-help-close-digital-divide/KROSI35BLXLSKKY36ACTNCHYZM/
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