Due Diligence: Get More Brain - eLearning With a Bottom-Up Approach.
More than twenty years ago, I was involved in the creation of web-based training (WBT) which I found quite modern at the time. However, when I recently stumbled across an e-learning solution, I suddenly realised how much my expectations had changed in the meantime and how some providers seem to be fully ignorant of this: the overall UX was terrible, apart from the didactically outdated content.?
Every user of such a tool will inevitably conclude that e-learning sucks.
Note that a German version is available on Swiss ICT platform inside-it.ch.
Corporate Learning Buzz
“Upskilling”, “capability building” and “corporate learning” are new buzzwords that address an increasingly picky workforce in developing their skills - and retaining talents via company-sponsored learning benefits.?
Creating these learning materials in-house is expensive for corporations. Here, educational publishers could offer their learning materials but they often lack a distribution channel to corporates, and the tools and content they offer are mostly old-fashioned: little to no tools for collaboration or tailoring content to the corporate’s specific needs.?
So when I met “Get More Brain” at a fantastic SICTIC event at Google Zurich this year, I found this startup to offer a quite intriguing approach to online learning - one that doesn’t just fix the end user’s UX problem but could also bring educational content by other means to new life.
Create, Use, Remix, Annotate and Share
With “Get More Brain”, basically every user can freely create, use, mix, annotate, add or customize content so that it meets their individual needs - or those of others since everyone can share its content with other users from the same company, and store the contents in personal notebooks acting as a kind of knowledge base. As such, learning can take place more collaboratively in a team which can greatly improve the learning experience and efficiency for users and organisations alike.?
For instance, a sales manager can add his pitch decks for training others selling their products, adding all the “between the lines” annotations that not only makes for a nice presentation but a compelling pitch. Those internal contents can also be mixed with excerpts of generic sales trainings from a publisher and the complete piece be made available e.g. to dealers which can access and collaborate on it too. And where licensed content is used, users will face a paywall that collects the fee for the publisher if accessed.?
Marketplace For Educational Content?
“Get More Brain” claims to take care of proper licensing and versioning of content snippets. This is usually a big pain when remixing and sharing content, and crucial for winning publishers to contribute their costly-developed content.?
This is made via a built-in marketplace through which learning materials can be offered and licensed for a one-time or recurring fee. Be it formal e-learning modules, digital books and journals, or any other type of content snippet that can be used for creating new learning materials or courses: at low cost and risk, creators can tap an additional distribution channel directly into corporations.?
For instance: A financial educational content provider might extend its reach by selling financial accounting courses via the marketplace to corporates. Buying corporates can then mix it with their internal financial procedures and KPI standards. The results are tailor-made and highly impactful learning materials for all finance people across their global businesses.
Using the Bitmark Format
An important aspect for such a content marketplace to function is to have an interchangeable format for content pieces. Here, "Get More Brain" bets on “bitmark” - an open source format for creating interactive learning content. With bitmark, content is strictly separated from layout so that it can be created once and published everywhere (“COPE”) - omnichannel and cross-devices. Additionally, creators can keep licenser control.
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Alongside, "Get More Brain" also supports classical office file formats such as PDF, PowerPoint, Word or HTML which are displayed via Get More Brain’s proprietary viewer that makes copying licensed materials tough. Additionally, digital transformation services into the bitmark format are offered.
"Get More Brain" claims to also use “tailored and AI-enabled learning”. Well, I’ve not seen lots of AI magic but parsing static content and creating quizzes automatically seems to be possible already. So if content creators or publishers e.g. can enrich existing (static) content with automatically generated quizzes then that’s super-helpful in modernizing the learning experience. Additionally, a chatbot shall provide personalized formative feedback to learning users, powered by Taskbase.
A Hybrid Breed?
It’s not a straight call to categorize "Get More Brain". They neither are a fully-featured Learning Experience Platforms (LXP) and neither a Learning Management Systems (LMS), knowledge base, digital library or online academy - it’s a mix of all.?
However, to me there are close and direct competitors via established and larger players in LXP, such as 360learning, EdCast, Degreed and Coorpacademy. But an estimated total market size in digital education publishing of USD 55 Bn in 2028 (growing at a CAGR of over 25%) should give ample room for such learning platforms (which make a much smaller fraction of that total market).
Early Signs Of Traction?
"Get More Brain" has their core product in use by a few first customers among which we find sounding names such as “Swiss Life” on the corporate side or “Institut für Finanzplanung (IfFP)” as an educational institution and publisher.?
Their go-to-market plan focuses on Switzerland, the UK and the rest of Europe in 2023, with the idea of conquering the US in 2024. Vertically, they currently focus solely on corporations but also intend to expand into private educational or vocational training organizations. Overall, this should bring them to somewhere close to CHF 40 million in Annual Recurring Revenues (ARR) by 2027, earned via subscriptions and commissions for content transacted via the marketplace.?
What’s crucial for them to succeed with their market place approach is to get to a critical mass of high-quality educational content and corporations buying it. According to Thomas Gabathuler discussions with large corporate prospects are promising. So if they can convince more corporations to use "Get More Brain" then this will pull in educational publishers and fill the marketplace that’s currently still empty.?
Bold Scale-up Plans
"Get More Brain" are aware of this so a good fraction of the CHF 3 million that they are raising now shall be invested into content acquisition. The rest shall mainly be spent for product development and market expansion. There is little doubt that this already sizable funding round will be followed soon by a few even bigger ones which will be contingent upon achieving that 1 million cARR
Personally, I’m not too concerned about this for now because the product and overarching idea looks like a great match for a market that is huge and has shown little innovation for too long. I particularly like that every user can create, remix and contribute, and that they use the bitmark format. It also makes sense that they focus on Enterprises for now but that their solution can also address the needs in other market segments such as private learning institutes, vocational training or even higher educational organizations.?
So if "Get More Brain" has some larger customers coming in soon and their quite bold expense side in the business plan is spent wisely then there is good potential that in a few years from now, our online learning experience will be entirely different than it is now.?
#elearning #learningexperience #learningmanagementsystems #training #upskilling #corporatelearning #capabilitybuilding #knowledgebase #swissmade #startups
This article is a repost of a?piece published in German on Swiss ICT news platform?Inside-IT?on 12-May-2023. The content of this article reflects Ramon’s personal opinion and shall not be construed as investment advice.