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Kahoot, the educational technology company, has appointed former BT Group chief executive Gavin Patterson to chair its board as it prepares for an expansion under new owners including Goldman Sachs.
The Oslo-based group was delisted in January after being acquired for about $2bn by investors including Goldman Sachs’s asset management arm, General Atlantic and Kirkbi, a vehicle run by Lego’s founding family.
Patterson, who left telecoms operator BT in 2019 and later served as president and chief revenue officer of Salesforce, said he was joining to help the company grow organically and through acquisitions, to serve as a platform to consolidate the fragmented educational technology market.
Since its launch in 2013, Kahoot has worked with schools and businesses to provide tools for learning including via online quizzes, and says it has hosted hundreds of millions of learning sessions on its platform.
“Be it growing the business in education or [with other businesses] . . . through the enterprise sector, these are both huge pools of growth potential,” Patterson said in an interview. “We’re well positioned and have the firepower to really drive the business forward through M&A as opportunities emerge.”
Shares in the Norwegian company surged during the Covid-19 pandemic when restrictions pushed schools and universities online. Since September 2021, however, such enthusiasm has waned, and Kahoot’s share price had halved by the time investors announced their all-cash deal last July.
Chief executive Eilert Hanoa remains at the helm of the group following the takeover, and said that exiting the public markets would give Kahoot a “better working environment”.
“The public market has been fairly turbulent for the past couple years,” he said, adding it was “beneficial to be private in this cycle to be able to [consolidate] and be able to build”.
Private equity investors have been attracted to acquisitions of listed companies over the past year as valuations on public markets have fallen. The offer represented a 53 per cent premium to the closing price on the Oslo Stock Exchange on May 22 last year, before key disclosures were made.
Patterson said that he was connected to Kahoot via Goldman Sachs after working with the US investment bank for more than 20 years over his career.
He said that he was attracted to the company’s strong brand, particularly among younger “Gen Z” consumers. He would not rule out an eventual return to public markets for the company, he added, though Kahoot was for now focused on growing and taking advantage of opportunities in its market.
“If it can’t find deals at the right price, actually growing organically and accelerating growth through investments in product and brand is indeed a very viable option,” he added.
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