Today, we’re excited to share that we led the $2M seed round of Antimatter, whose mission is to build the world’s most valuable peer-to-peer learning network, centered around memes. Spacecadet and Ordinary Holdings joined us as new investors in this round, alongside existing investors Haystack and Compound.

Memes have been used as an educational tool for years and there are many online learning communities such as r/physicsmemes, @updatingonrome, and @historymemes_explained. But Antimatter is integrating everything from meme creation to sharing, to collaborating in one platform. 

The great thing about Antimatter is that teachers and students publish memes openly, so content isn’t siloed to the classroom like it is with other EdTech solutions. In this way, Antimatter is creating a community that is rewriting the canon in memes and puzzles. You can imagine how this platform can grow to become the largest and most valuable peer-to-peer learning network with memes as a subset of puzzles.

On Antimatter today, teachers are asking their students to meme lessons to demonstrate their understanding of the subject. Antimatter’s Discover Page showcases real memes, created by real students in their classroom.

Early traction has been terrific, with classrooms growing 80% month-over-month. Here’s how one middle school social studies teacher summed up his classroom’s experience with Antimatter: 

“….[my students] were so much more engaged on Antimatter because they were able to create their memes in the same workspace and then see what everyone else was creating at the same time. This turned it into a friendly competition for who could get the most “blessed” meme, which motivated them to try even harder to create great memes. 

The best thing I can say about Antimatter is that it really created a conducive environment for my students to express their ideas, thoughts and knowledge in a fun and collaborative way.” 

Why this mission-driven founder?

We love crazy ideas, but crazy ideas only make sense when there is a mission-driven founder at the helm. We are huge fans of Antimatter’s founder Jonathan Libov and have known and worked with him in different capacities over the past eight years…first, as an analyst at USV (when we co-wrote an epic blog series on healthcare), then as head of product at Figure 1 (a V1 company) and then as a freelancer who helped on some internal V1 work. All this to say, we know how fantastic Jonathan is and are thrilled he’s found his passion here! 

And on a final note, there’s been a lot of discussion lately about the impact of GenAI and ChatGPT on education. If you’re curious about this topic, we recommend reading Jonathan’s thoughts on the matter on both his personal blog and the Antimatter blog. In terms of where Antimatter fits in a ChatGPT world…memes are human creations; their growth is a fight against the tailwinds of ChatGPT. 

More importantly, in a world where learning material is abundant, synthesis is the most valuable thing that a learning product can provide. And that’s why memes and Antimatter are such useful tools. Because you really need to understand the subject matter to tell a good story.