{"id":39063,"date":"2023-10-20T15:00:33","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/australian-startup-go1-gets-ready-to-put-a-rocket-under-the-online-learning-industry-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:00:33","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:00:33","slug":"australian-startup-go1-gets-ready-to-put-a-rocket-under-the-online-learning-industry-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/australian-startup-go1-gets-ready-to-put-a-rocket-under-the-online-learning-industry-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian startup GO1 gets ready to put a rocket under the online learning industry – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

The online learning industry is stuck in the past, according to GO1<\/a> chief executive officer and co-founder Andrew Barnes.<\/p>\n

Recently GO1\u2019s Aduro<\/a> was ranked as the best learning management system in the Asia-Pacific, according to rankings by e-learning expert Craig Weiss.<\/p>\n

The startup has come a long way since bootstrapping the development of the product at the beginning of 2013. It now has revenue in the \u201cmillions\u201d per annum and employs 50 people across Australia, the United States and Vietnam. It\u2019s set to expand to London next month.<\/p>\n

There are over 16,000 users and organisations on Aduro. In Mexico alone, over 3000 schools are using the platform to create collaborative projects across multiple school districts.<\/p>\n

After beginning as a web agency, the company has shifted its focus to the online learning space after realising the dire need for a product.<\/p>\n

Barnes says one of the recurring themes GO1 heard from clients was the need to build e-learning portals, because none of the solutions available fit the requirements of what those organisations were after.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnline learning and learning with technology is still stuck in a paradigm from 10 years ago,\u201d Barnes says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s some dominant players in the market, US company Blackboard, and because they\u2019ve got a monopoly they\u2019re tactic was not to innovate, but buy the number two company in the market every four or five years. They buy every company and discontinue their products.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw that as an opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says Blackboard has yet to try that tactic with GO1.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not the ideal suitor for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the company has received interest from US-based venture capital and private equity firms.<\/p>\n

Barnes is well placed to comment on the online learning space, he\u2019s doing a PHD on the topic and will soon head to the UK on a Rhodes Scholarship. \u201cI like juggling,\u201d he says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Craig Weiss releases his LMS rankings every six months. Earlier this year it was also named the best new LMS of 2014.<\/p>\n

Barnes credits that success to being one of the first LMSs to adopt a mobile native approach and by focusing on making its platform as accessible as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe focus on a mantra that you shouldn\u2019t need to learn how to learn,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a lot of software systems there\u2019s 1001 different features and often a lot of users aren\u2019t able to take advantage of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aduro isn\u2019t limiting itself to the education sector. There\u2019s a need for LMS across corporates and non-profits too.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur customers span traditional schools through to unis, but learning and training is a universal concept that applies to government, not-for-profit and large enterprise as well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The way in which all of those organisations provide education to students and employees is going to change dramatically in the next five to ten years, and GO1 hopes to be leading the charge, Barnes says.<\/p>\n

While the company is looking at the possibility of taking on investment now, Barnes says there\u2019s no doubt the hunt for capital can be a distraction for early-stage startups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re getting a lot of interest overseas and looking out to the market because we\u2019re at a point where we can provide return on capital, and that will help push our presence in the US,\u201d Barnes says.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies like Atlassian show, within Australia we need to bootstrap because there isn\u2019t necessarily the capital markets here.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy personal view is that (venture capital) can be a distraction. There\u2019s certainly where it\u2019s needed, biotech and pharmaceuticals in particular. But with web and software services, particularly SaaS, there shouldn\u2019t be any reason not to cash flow that, or at least get it to that level initially.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you want to put the rocket booster on and scale it out, use it for that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re definitely behind the concept of build locally and scale globally.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to be number one in the Asia-Pacific, but also the world, and that\u2019s imminently achievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on <\/i>Facebook<\/i><\/a>, <\/i>Twitter<\/i><\/a>, and <\/i>LinkedIn<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The online learning industry is stuck in the past, according to GO1 chief executive officer and co-founder Andrew Barnes. Recently<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39063"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}