Todd Zipper: Around late 2005, one of the entrepreneurs bought a business that became what Kaplan Higher Education is today. This individual had an idea to start a marketing business focused on higher education using TV commercials. We called it LendingTree meets eHarmony. It had a matching algorithm. We went on to build a brand
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. The white-labeled education services business is scaling rapidly, and institutions of all sizes are building online programs. Learning House operates in the small, regional college and university segment, and has built a nice business. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey.
Sramana Mitra: Who pays you? Tod Browndorf: When we sell a course, we retain a percentage of revenue. Sramana Mitra: I got it. Tod Browndorf: Let me go back to the HIPAA example. That was created by a company called Teach Privacy. Teach Privacy is an expert in HIPAA compliance. We had a customer who
Sramana Mitra: Where are you right now in terms channel, or other strategic pieces that enable you to grow? How do you acquire customer? Is it a direct channel? Is it an online channel? Robert Moore: We have two main channels through which we acquire customers. One of them is inbound marketing and one of
Sramana Mitra: So you’re a B2B platform software company. Tod Browndorf: Correct. We just delivered 600 HIPAA compliance courses. Then we give them an interface where they can then distribute it within their organization. We didn’t create the course. We’re the distributors of the course. Our software is able to report who did what, when
Sramana Mitra: You said you’ve raised about $22 million. Let’s talk about other strategic moves during the past four years that you’ve been a venture-funded company. Robert Moore: One thing that we did quite recently that I think was very strategic in nature was we decided to release a second product. For most SaaS companies,
Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk a little bit about the specifics. How long was the period where you worked with personal savings and what kind of numbers are we talking? How much of your personal savings did you have to put in to get it to some level? Tod Browndorf: Probably two years and about $100,000.
Sramana Mitra: What were your metrics when you were putting this round together? What kind of monthly revenue run rate did you have at that time? Robert Moore: At that time, we were less than a million in revenue. That would translate to something to the order of a hundred customers, or just below a hundred. We