Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Can you talk to me about the competition? There is a whole bunch of players in the EdTech space who also cater to the same customers that you are interested in. Pluralsight is a very good example. Who else do you consider as a competitor?

Ben Spring: There are a couple of labs in the industry. They all have their own USP. Where TryHackMe is really strong is delivering training content to an individual. We heavily embed gamification into the product to make it engaging and fun. A lot of our competitors are catering to the enterprise space.

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Video FAQs

Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How many enterprise customers do you have right now?

Ben Spring: Well over a hundred. We’ve been super fortunate to onboard Fortune 500 companies, lots of governments, lots of schools, and colleges. We’ve done some really rewarding work with the education of Scotland to provide training to 14 and 15-year-olds to break into the industry. We’ve been able to expand the number of people using TryHackMe whether you’re a 14-year-old, someone who wants to transition jobs, or someone who’s working in a business.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: My Digital Money CEO Guy Gotslak (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How many crypto traders are on the system?

Guy Gotslak: We’re in the thousands so far. Each individual contributes a good amount because the average IRA that comes in is $25,000 to $50,000. We’re already in the thousands of users and growing.

Sramana Mitra: What is your business model?

Guy Gotslak: We take a transaction fee. We’re looking to expand our products into other assets as well.

Colors: Les Pines II

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Les Pins II

Les Pins II | Sramana Mitra, 2020 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 9  x 12, On Paper

Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was happening with the business? Were the conversation rates increasing? Was the number of users increasing and how?

Ben Spring: It was completely organic. We were incredibly lucky. It was just word-of-mouth. We really tried to make a great user experience and understand the user’s problem. At the time, I was constantly iterating on the product and speaking to users. The conversion was still fairly low. I was going into my old job and I just couldn’t stop thinking about TryHackMe. I’d go out on my lunch and I’d be writing emails and doing stuff on the side. I took the jump to leave.

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