On 9 December 2020 a young Sydney tutoring company rang the bell on the ASX. Its shares opened at A$1.27, six per cent above the A$1.20 it had asked for, and the raise brought in A$30 million.
For Mark Rohald, the chief executive, it was a quick arrival. Cluey Learning had been incorporated on 19 July 2017, with Rohald appointed chief executive on 1 July and to the board the day the company came into being. The tutoring service itself launched in July 2018. Barely two years later it was a listed business, with a market value of about A$143.5 million at listing.
A company history deck showed the founders held about 30 per cent, with chairman Robert Gavshon holding roughly 8 per cent.
The pitch was plain. Parents wanted one-to-one help for a child who was falling behind or aiming higher, and they wanted it without a drive across town. Cluey recruited tutors, trained them, and ran live sessions online. By the time of the listing it had around 620 tutors and had delivered more than 192,000 sessions, 52,700 of them in the most recent quarter. Then the pandemic sent every classroom online, and the company's model looked prescient rather than novel.
The founders kept real skin in the game. A company history deck showed the founders held about 30 per cent, with chairman Robert Gavshon holding roughly 8 per cent. A listing like that is a promise to stay.
Growth meant buying as well as building. Cluey added Code Camp, which teaches children to program, as a second business. It also set out to buy Art of Smart, a larger tutoring group, but that deal fell over when the conditions in the share purchase agreement were not met.
The harder years came after the first day. Pandemic demand eased and the share price drifted. In December 2025 the company asked shareholders for fresh money through an entitlement offer, with the founders in line to receive new shares. In 2026 it proposed leaving the ASX altogether and becoming an unlisted public company, explaining that trading volumes were low and a few investors held most of the stock, so the market for its shares was illiquid. A general meeting to approve the move was set for 13 August 2026.
The arc is a useful one for a founder weighing a listing. Going public gave Cluey capital and a profile inside three years. It did not give it liquidity, and a small company with concentrated owners can find the public market is a cost rather than a benefit. The business of putting a good tutor in front of a child stayed the same throughout.