Mishcon de Reya has advised EdTech start-up Erase All Kittens (EAK) on the strategic investment by Twinkl Educational Publishing. Twinkl led the seed funding round which raised a total of $1m, with participation from first investor Christian Reyntjens of the A Black Square family office, alongside angel investors, including one of the founders of Shazam.
EAK has created a “Mario-style” web-based game designed for kids aged 8-12, placing an emphasis on inspiring more girls to code. The game now boasts 160,000 players in more than 100 countries and is currently being used in over 3,000 schools, mostly in the U.K. and U.S., with traction having increased by 500% during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Andrew Wolfin, Innovation Partner who led the transaction, commented: "It's been fantastic to share in the Erase All Kittens journey, particularly one that can make such a difference to the current gender digital divide. This fundraise leveraged the ambitious nature of the business as well as the strong leadership team, I'm really looking forward to seeing the results when the game launches."
With these new funds, the female-founded team of EAK will develop a far more gamified version of the existing game, set to launch in August, to teach kids as young as eight skills such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript – with a view to bridging the gap between children learning simple concepts and being able to create on the web like developers.
Dee Saigal, co-founder, CEO and creative director of EAK commented: "We were very happy to have worked with Andrew Wolfin on the close of our seed funding round. He did an excellent job drafting our new shareholders’ agreement and on negotiations for the deal, and offered valuable advice on other aspects of our business which really helped us moving forward."