The lucrative US market is beckoning for London EdTech GoodCourse.
The TikTok-style micro-learning company was founded by Chris Mansfield and Omar Mughal. Since launching the platform earlier this year, the company has already reached close to £250k of annual recurring revenue.
Clients include the University of Nottingham, Florida University and GamCare. The sheer size of the opportunity Stateside will see it launch an office there “within 18 months”, according to CEO Chris Mansfield.
“The US market is a big part of our expansion plans. We won our first big US client recently,” he tells TechBlast of a company which featured on our sister publication BusinessCloud’s EdTech 50 ranking.
“We’re looking for investors who are best-placed to help us with our ambitions to scale rapidly – that could be from a variety of angles. One of those might be the ability to help us transplant into the US.”
GoodCourse serves content – paired with TikTok-style explainer videos – straight to the recipient’s phone via text, email or messaging platforms such as Slack. Clicking on these ‘magic links’ takes them straight into the learning session without needing to register or log in.
It focuses on areas such as compliance, harassment and inclusion – topics which people do not need to do their job, but the company itself wants to engage them on.
Growth targets
The startup currently employs six full-time staff with freelance support across areas such as product marketing, tech and content creation – “a lighter-touch way of running a startup”, says Mansfield.
He adds of the coming 18 months: “We aim to 4-5X the size of the company in terms of revenue, and double headcount at least.”
Prior to GoodCourse, Mansfield worked in the investments team at M&G before taking on business development roles with tech firms Tessian and Futr.
“I’ve worked in early-stage B2B startups where they’ve identified a problem and there are some initial customers using a new solution,” he says. “But the goal is: how do we continue to refine and improve the product? How does it solve these problems? And eventually, how do we grow the company nationally and internationally to be a leading provider of that particular solution?
“Distribution is super important: you have to make sure in the early days that you’ve got an outbound sales process which allows you to start conversations with potential clients who are then taken through a fairly codified process.”
He advises: “Get it in front of the right people, with the right discovery beforehand – that will give you the biggest chance of growing your client base.”
Launch your MVP
Mansfield also believes in pushing out a minimum viable product which can then be iterated on through client feedback. “Get it out there! The first people trying it out, giving feedback, will quickly lead to version 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 – and suddenly V2 is out three months later. You want that process to be as fast as possible.
“Even if it is not the embodiment of the beautiful picture in your mind of the final product, that’s fine! That picture is not going to be the final version – it will be a much more refined product that has come from actual users using it and giving you feedback.”
GoodCourse raised £575,000 in pre-seed funding a year ago. The round was led by RLC Ventures and RTP Capital, with Monzo founder Tom Blomfield, Lendable founder Victoria Van Lennep, GoCardless & Nested founder Matt Robinson and Look After My Bills founder Henry de Zoete participating.
Mansfield explains its own development journey: “We moved from text-based delivery to a more engaging app-like experience. We began to incorporate features like dynamic nudging – whether or not you are nudged to engage with content depends on how far into it you are.
“And then things like incentives and rewards: gamifying it with messages such as ‘the first 20 people to complete this course will win a free gift’.”