Linz Cooking Course Start-Up 7hauben Buys Vegan Masterclass, Brings In Tractive Alumni as Investors
Trending Topics Jakob Steinschaden
7hauben bought Vegan Masterclass and vefa’s plant-based course business. The Linz start-up also raised mid-six-figure funding, with money from Tractive alumni.
Based on reporting by Trending Topics, Jakob Steinschaden — read the original for the full story.
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7hauben is adding vegan cooking to its menu. The Linz-based course start-up is buying German online school Vegan Masterclass and the training program of vefa Fernschule, while also closing a funding round in the mid-six-figure euro range.
The acquisition brings in one of the better-known names in plant-based cooking online. Vegan Masterclass was co-founded in 2018 by chef and author Sebastian Copien and offers about 40 courses with more than 1,100 video lessons. The roster includes Sophia Hoffmann, Stina Spiegelberg, Björn Moschinski and nutrition expert Niko Rittenau. The deal also covers vefa Fernschule’s state-accredited “Plant-Based Pro” distance course for both ambitious home cooks and professionals.
7hauben says the brand will stay separate, and Copien will remain involved. Two new courses with him have already been produced. The company did not say what it paid. What it did say is that the new assets will feed into a broader push: more courses, more marketing and its own platform tech, with production and marketing shared across the group.
This is not a one-off gamble. 7hauben bought into Swiss rival Chef Session in 2022, and it is now using fresh money plus its own cash flow to keep buying. The investor list includes Traxit, backed by 19 former Tractive leaders, including co-founder Michael Hurnaus. Tractive itself was sold this year to Bending Spoons in a deal worth close to a billion, and those former executives are already putting cash back into younger companies.
The numbers at 7hauben are moving too. Revenue was most recently almost 40 percent higher than in the same period a year earlier, new customers were up by almost 70 percent, and the platform has about 30,000 active subscribers. More than 100,000 paying customers have bought courses since launch, and the company is aiming for more than €3 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2026.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
7hauben is doing the rare boring thing that actually works: buying content, stacking subscriptions, and not pretending virality is a business model. The Tractive crowd backing this makes sense; they’ve seen an exit and now they’re hunting for the next clean software-shaped revenue stream. In Europe, that’s usually the moment when everyone else starts talking about “platforms” and one company quietly sells more courses.
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