Thought Leaders in Online Education: Greg Smith, CEO of Thinkific (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What trends are you seeing on your platform? What are the top topics that people are teaching and what are the top topics that people are learning?

Greg Smith: This is a question I get a lot. There are trends within different areas. There’s a lot of training and education around health and fitness. There’s a lot around levelling up in your career and profession. That can span everything from corporate finance to software development. There’s a lot around crafts and hobbies.

The trend we’re seeing is that anyone out there who’s got a skill or passion is now able to go and put it online and share it with others. If you have a business, you can add in your special skill or knowledge as a learning component and get it out there.

The areas we see the most of are really for people who are post-secondary. They’re out of high school. They might be in college or beyond. They’re looking to level up themselves either professionally or personally. There’s a lot of focus on career advancement and self-improvement.

The beautiful trend there is, you can now go and learn from the best person in the world at hula hooping if that’s what you’re interested in. If you’re really good at hula hooping, you could put your course online and build a business out of it.

In fact, we have people who have done that. I’m constantly shocked at the kinds of topics that can be successful because it really is everything. 

Sramana Mitra: How many educators are on your platform?

Greg Smith: We have about 40,000 active sites. Each site might have one or hundreds of courses on it. It might just be one teacher creating one or a few courses, or it could be many teachers.

Sramana Mitra: So what you count is the number of sites on your platform. How many people are learning across the 40,000 sites?

Greg Smith : In the tens of millions of students. It’s definitely having a huge impact. We have some sites that have a million students.

Sramana Mitra: Talk about business models. Is it subscription? Is it transaction? How do the sites charge?

Greg Smith: We do have an e-commerce engine built-in. It’s more flexible than what Shopify has. We’ve invested a ton in that area. That allows our course creators to charge and author in different ways. There’s a one-time fee. That can range from $5 to $1,000 for a single course.

There are installment plans. Once people go over $300, they’ll offer an installment plan. For example, my course is $398. You can pay in four months at $99 a month. It’s my personal course. Another really big one is people charging on a recurring basis. We’re seeing more and more of that.

There are lots of other ways you can charge. You can do discounts, coupons, and trials. The recurring revenue piece is nice if they can get people into a model where they’re charging on a recurring basis and continuing to add value. That’s where you can start to build a sustainable business. People do well with the one-time fees as well.

Sramana Mitra: All 40,000 are using your payment gateway?

Greg Smith: Because we’re more of a platform and we allow people to connect with whatever they want, the majority do use us to process the payments. But there’s 20% to 30% that will connect it however they want.

Sramana Mitra: You have a decent sense then of the revenue levels of these 40,000 sites that are on your platform?

Greg Smith: We do.

Sramana Mitra: Can you provide any trend on how many companies are doing at least a million in revenue a year?

Greg Smith: I do know that a good portion are doing well enough that they are successful financially in terms of being able to sustain this as a business and grow it. 

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Greg Smith, CEO of Thinkific
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