StudySoup offers P2P-style platform for classroom materials
More than 300 colleges have reportedly signed up to StudySoup, a peer-to-peer style marketplace that provides a “one-stop shop for class notes, study guides, note cards and more.” The San Francisco start-up has attracted a community of over 250,000 users in under two years and already has more than one million documents listed covering over 250,000 courses, which can be accessed by students and educators for between $11 and $30 per month.

Learning Resources

Hundreds of Colleges Tap Peer-to-Peer Marketplace for Study Materials

A San Francisco startup that has more than 300 colleges and universities in its community is quickly becoming the one-stop shop for class notes, study guides, note cards and more. StudySoup allows students to buy and sell class materials through its peer-to-peer marketplace.

Launched in 2014, the startup already has a community of more than 530,000 students accessing more than a million documents for nearly 250,000 courses, according to the StudySoup website. Pennsylvania State University, for example, has 1,663 documents on the site that cover art, business, foreign languages, math and science. Students can sign up for the service for $11 to $30 a month and search through materials by notetaker, class or professor.

On the business side, the platform is dependent on its “Elite Notetakers,” or students who take and submit notes to StudySoup. Elite Notetakers can earn $300 to $500 per course, depending on the amount of content they submit. In some cases, Elite Notetakers are making more than $1,200 per month in sales, with the top earner making $2,306 in one semester.

StudySoup recently secured $1.7 million in seed funding from Canyon Creek Capital, 500 Startups and other investors. The startup will use the funding to develop the product and for marketing purposes.

To view the available materials by school, visit the StudySoup site.