Paddy Secures €1Million Funding In Pre-seed Round

Paddy has created an AI platform that streamlines teachers’ daily tasks, freeing up time for them to offer personalized support to students.

I spoke with CEO Matty Frommann to learn more. Founded in Eastern Westphalia by three “teachers’ kids” — Matty Frommann, Lukas Portmann, and Tobias Schröder — the startup was launched shortly after they finished school.

"I saw firsthand as a student how overwhelmed many teachers were – no time for individual support, even though the intention was there. That's what sparked the idea for Paddy," says Matty Frommann, co-founder and CEO of paddy.

His parents—both teachers—often shared their frustrations with overcrowded classrooms, endless grading, and the constant struggle to meet every student's needs.

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Teachers frequently juggle administrative tasks, curriculum demands, and classroom management, leaving little time to support individual students. During the pandemic, the future Paddy founders organized local teacher training sessions and witnessed firsthand the digital and structural challenges schools faced.

In the DACH region alone, around two million teachers work across more than 40,000 schools (German Federal Employment Agency). Yet, practical solutions to ease their workload are rare.

A Bitkom study (German Digital Association) found that over 70% of educators identify overload and teacher shortages as key challenges, with more than half saying larger class sizes leave little time for personalized student support.

In 2024, the trio founded DigitalErleben GmbH and launched the Paddy AI platform in January 2025—a tool designed to truly simplify daily teaching tasks. The platform helps with lesson planning, generates tailored teaching materials in multiple formats, provides digital tools for lesson delivery, and analyzes class performance.

Paddy was developed from insights gathered through 500 training courses and 10,000 teacher conversations—engaging more educators than most education ministers ever have.

According to Frommann, this made it easy to attract teachers to the platform, "because we already had 500 customers through that work and we had built a relationship with the person within the school who makes decisions such as tech purchasing."

Teachers asked the same question every time: 'Why isn't there a tool that really helps us?' So we built it: paddy."

Paddy’s user base has soared to an impressive 12,000 teachers. The platform reduces the workload involved in planning, delivering, and reviewing lessons, helping educators provide personalized attention to students—without adding extra work or needing additional training.

According to Frommann, the platform's most-used function is the lesson preparation part. "Right now, teachers use Paddy primarily for content creation, planning entire lessons of 45 or 90 minutes."

The platform identifies the topic, target audience, and learning goals, then recommends suitable tasks, methods, and materials. It creates differentiated content and tracks student progress to guide next steps. Teachers quickly see where their class stands and who needs extra help.

Instead of juggling multiple tools, binders, and to-do lists, teachers regain time for what truly matters in the classroom: personalized support, meaningful feedback, and building real connections with their students.

Investors in Paddy include the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capital, along with 45 companies and family offices.

Felix Assion, Investment Manager at HTGF, says Paddy demonstrates how we can ease teachers’ stress while supporting students in developing AI skills from an early age:

"Beyond the impressive product, it's the team that won me over: Despite their young age, the founders already demonstrate remarkable entrepreneurial intuition – and I'm excited to see where the journey takes them!"

With more than 12,000 active teacher users just six months after launch, Paddy is rapidly transforming education in the DACH region through AI. Frommann explains:

"Right now, we've expanded to 100 school customers — a milestone we reached just last week. In the coming months, we want to enhance the platform's AI capabilities. We already have a lot of AI tools, but we're aiming to make them more intelligent.

At the moment, we're strong in lesson preparation and analysis, but less so in the in-class teaching part — and that will be our next product focus. We're also hiring extensively to reach 500 customers next year."

About Paddy

Founded in 2024, Paddy is an AI-driven platform that streamlines teaching—from planning and material creation to tracking progress. With insights from training over 25,000 teachers, Paddy helps reduce workload and enables personalized student support, ensuring every graduate is prepared for a digital future.