# Building the "Spotify of Textbooks" with Gauthier Van Malderen, Founder @ Perlego

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/riding-unicorns-venture-capital-entrepreneurship-technology-3057693/building-the-spotify-of-textbooks-with-gauthier-van-malderen-founder-perlego
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/riding-unicorns-venture-capital-entrepreneurship-technology-3057693/building-the-spotify-of-textbooks-with-gauthier-van-malderen-founder-perlego.md
Podcast: [Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology](https://stenobird.com/podcast/riding-unicorns-venture-capital-entrepreneurship-technology-3057693)
Published: 2025-11-05T07:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1620178/episodes/18081273-building-the-spotify-of-textbooks-with-gauthier-van-malderen-founder-perlego.mp3
Audio file: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1620178/episodes/18081273-building-the-spotify-of-textbooks-with-gauthier-van-malderen-founder-perlego.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/riding-unicorns-venture-capital-entrepreneurship-technology-3057693/episodes/building-the-spotify-of-textbooks-with-gauthier-van-malderen-founder-perlego
Duration seconds: 2617

## Resource

Hector is joined by Gauthier van Malderen, Founder and CEO of Perlego, the “Spotify for textbooks” and one of Europe’s leading edtech scale-ups. Gauthier shares the remarkable journey of building Perlego from a personal frustration with expensive university textbooks into a global subscription platform transforming access to educational content. He reflects on early failures, the turning points that led to success, and how COVID accelerated the company’s growth. The discussion dives deep into...

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/riding-unicorns-venture-capital-entrepreneurship-technology-3057693/episodes/building-the-spotify-of-textbooks-with-gauthier-van-malderen-founder-perlego/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/riding-unicorns-venture-capital-entrepreneurship-technology-3057693/building-the-spotify-of-textbooks-with-gauthier-van-malderen-founder-perlego.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.