Gnowbe

Connecting quality content with needed skills and mindsets to improve employability delivered by smartphone

Challenge: Experts predict 20-30% of tasks will be replaced by AI and robots in the next decade. How to upskill billions in 21st century knowledge, skills, mindsets to be relevant in age of digitization? Gnowbe addresses this through providing a mobile-first digital learning solution that delivers experiential, participatory learning which develops 21st century skills (creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration) on any topic from technical to soft skills. Gnowbe works with enterprises to assess the types of skills they are trying to develop and partners with accredited and recognized experts to create digital learning programs to close that gap and provide relevant training real-time, at need and delivered at scale via mobile.

Educating and upskilling requires:
1) easy access to education
2) quality, accredited content
3) technology to power it

Gnowbe has started partnering with experts like KPMG Academy, Temasek Polytechnic, Ngee Ann Polytechnic and other leading experts to deliver accredited and recognized courses based on what employers like Microsoft, hospitals and banks are looking for. Content is authored by the experts based on the skills needed. Gnowbe provides the mobile instructional design expertise and technology platform to connect quality content to needed skills and mindsets to improve employability.

We are a mobile-first solution designed optimally for learning on-the-go. Mobile-first design requires a re-imagining of the content to fit smaller formats. Mobile-first results in greater engagement (10-12x higher), access to more people and ability to use more interactive features (upload video, chat, share)

We are designed based on andragogy (science of adult learning) and transformative learning theory to encourage learners to think and apply. We call this Learn-Think-Apply-Share. We don't just deliver content through videos, articles, and text. We empower our learners to participate thru learn-by-doing

Gnowbe's mobile-first (web-enabled) design and the participatory nature of our learning sets Gnowbe apart globally

Our tech enables massive scale and growth given the easy access it provides to anyone.

For learners, Gnowbe's learn-by-doing approach challenges learners to apply what they learn (e.g., upload videos, photos, reflections) and share it using social media features in community.

Curators need to structure their content in bite-sized ways using critical thinking skills to get to the core essence of any topic and deliver it in creative ways to make it fun and participatory. Our mobile and web authoring tools provide easy access so that anyone can create their own programs and anyone can access it anytime.

1) Confirm at least 5 more strategic partnerships with accredited bodies by industry vertical and function (e.g., HR, finance, IT, nursing, real estate) to provide relevant content to existing and future employees

2) Deepen existing relationships with enterprises to provide full scale training solutions to upskill existing and potential employees to ensure they stay relevant

3) Expand training partner network to least 50 new training partners who license our platform to support their own training businesses. This provides user growth and recurring revenue.

We currently have MOUs and strategic partnerships with 5 large institutions and plan to double this year.

Impact the lives of millions by improving their confidence, knowledge and relevance in skills needed to increase employability (e.g., digital skills, creative thinking, agile, lean mindsets, leadership, empathy) and help match employees to job opportunities all around the world.

In 5 years, we expect to be in every major country.

Our vision to redefine how people learn and move beyond passive content consumption to a much more participatory learning approach which causes learners to learn - think - apply - share.

Gnowbe provides significantly lower cost quality training content which can be accesses anytime, anywhere from remote villages to urban cities. By empowering everyone to learn from their phones and connect them to a global community, Gnowbe develops digital capacity. 21st century skills are based on 4C's (creativity, collaboration, communications and critical thinking). Gnowbe enables the learner to develop this as they have to participate, reflect and communicate their answers in a creative way in Gnowbe (e.g., video, photo, text).

Higher engagement rates (10-12x that of leading e-learning players), higher knowledge retention, increased pass rates for certification exams and scalability using Gnowbe.

One partner increased training of Microsoft skills from 40 people at a time to thousands with Gnowbe.

We recently partnered with one of the top 3 polytechnics in Singapore and trained 40 lecturers on how to digitize content in Gnowbe. Within 3 months, they were able to curator >60 micro-learning courses focused on upskilling and promoting lifelong learning and employability.

So-Young Kang is the founder and CEO and remains in this role. The other co-founder Rok Krulec who was the CTO is no longer actively involved with the operations but remains a shareholder and supporter. He is a CTO so he left to pursue his other passions in crypto. He enjoys starting, not necessarily scaling and operating businesses.

Current leadership:
- Head of Engineering, Uros Smolnik, who was the 1st employee to build the architecture for us
- Chi Ming Loh who heads our strategic partnerships
- Saumya Agrawal who manages marketing

Our strategy to scale has 3 main pillars:
1) Channel partners who have deep relationships by region. We currently have channel partners in the US, Philippines, Middle East, Singapore, Switzerland, Indonesia and Nigeria. In 2017, 25% of revenues came from channel partners. We expect this to grow exponentially as the # of channel partners grows globally.

2) Deepening penetration of enterprise clients. Our target clients have >1k employees so as we deepen the relationship, our solution becomes a 'stickier, must-have' solution as part of the future of work.

3) Strategic partnerships with governments, institutions, & associations to provide both quality content and access to millions of learners.

We would use Solve's support to further develop our product for Gnowbe 2.0 which includes AI and machine learning to provide better learning recommendations and personalized learner profiles. We would also invest in hiring a larger enterprise sales teams to increase penetration in key verticals (e.g., financial services, education, technology, medical, pharma) where there are lots of employees who constantly need to be reskilled to stay relevant. Lastly we would invest in strategic partnerships with content partners by skill set, capability and industry vertical to ensure relevant accredited content to improve employability.

Internal barriers:
1) Time to close deals is always a risk when working with enterprise
2) Managing and growing channel partners, needs constant management and refinement
3) Ensuring quality content, completion rates are 8-10x higher than the top e-learning platforms available, requiring high quality content.

External barriers:
-Increased competition in the mobile, micro-learning space and entrenched systems which makes it harder to penetrate. We are managing this risk by educating the market on the values of experiential and participatory learning which is based on the science of adult learning.