232: Learning to Build Revenue as a Startup in Cyprus (Panos Siozos of LearnWorlds)

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Background on Panos Siozos of LearnWorlds:

Panos Siozos is the CEO and Co-Founder of LearnWorlds. Panos has a PhD in Educational Technology from the Computer Science Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds a BSc from the same department. He has extensive work experience as a computer science educator and as a software engineer and IT manager. He has also taken part as a researcher in many EU-funded research projects. Some of his research interests include Computer Assisted Assessment, On-line Educational Environments, Computer Ethics, Privacy, ICT, and Innovation. Before going into the startup route, Panos was working in the European Parliament as a policy adviser for research and innovation. He is currently ‘tasting his own medicine' having co-founded LearnWorlds.com, an ed-tech SaaS startup.

LearnWorlds.com is an e-learning company that is transforming self-paced learning. Their white-label SaaS platform offers professional trainers, training organizations, and businesses a hassle-free way to create their own, personally-branded, online school. LearnWorlds functions as an “educational amplifier”, transforming the study of textual and video-based learning material into an interactive, social, gamified, enjoyable, and notably effective learning practice.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

  • [1:04] Panos Siozos is from Cyprus, which is in the Mediterranean and part of the European Union. He is Greek but has been living in Cyprus since 2014.
  • [2:48] LearnWorlds, which Panos describes as a Shopify for online courses, is a platform where everyone can create, deliver, and sell online courses to their customers.
  • [4:05] Being dissatisfied with the usual e-Learning courses platform, Panos decides to start LearnWorlds.
  • [5:11] Panos explains the advantages of choosing LearnWorlds.
  • [9:40] Making educational courses more engaging and less boring is one of the features of LearnWorlds. Panos shares an example of one customer who used LearnWorlds to create an engaging online course.
  • [14:54] The company is based in Greece and Cyprus with 99 employees and they are still hiring more people. They also received funding of $32 million from Inside Partners, which is a private equity firm from the US.
  • [18:53] In the beginning, LearnWorlds was purely a bootstrapped company.
  • [19:37] During college, Panos and his co-founders met and became friends. They did post-graduate studies in Educational Technology and built their first platform in 2000.
  • [23:59] After finishing graduate school, Panos did a couple of low-paying jobs until he started working in the European Parliament in Brussels.
  • [25:13] In 2012 Panos and his two co-founders met in Crete and started brainstorming about going into the e-Learning space and creating a startup.
  • [29:57] When he was working in Brussels, there was a huge economic crisis in Greece. This downturn in the economy gave Panos and his co-founders the drive to do something entrepreneurial.
  • [32:02] During the economic and political crisis in Greece, Panos turned to the US market because American customers were willing to take the risk when it comes to digital products and online courses.
  • [40:35] In 2014, they started LearnWorlds but they had no official budget and no customers. They were also doing some side projects to get more revenue.
  • [42:45] In the first month of LearnWorlds, they hired someone who took zero salary but was promised a share in the company. Also, for the first two and a half years, they had no revenue.
  • [45:05] Even though they were able to get customers during the first few months of LearnWorlds, the revenues were still negligible and it’s like they were giving their product for free.
  • [48:39] It was already 2017 when Panos and his co-founders were able to give themselves a little bit of salary from their business.
  • [51:58] Keeping a remote team connected, focused, and sharing the same vision, are very challenging for Panos.
  • [57:15] To become the least useful person in the company is what Panos is aiming for in the next couple of years.
  • [1:00:14] Panos shares more of the challenges and hardships that they encountered running the business.
  • [1:04:22] More helpful advice from Panos on how to succeed and improve in business and entrepreneurship.

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Fabulous 4 Questions:

  1. 📖📚 Favorite Books? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  2. 🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Aftershokz Bone Conducting Headphones
  3. 🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Zapier
  4. 💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Outbound sales

Key Point from the Interview:

  • “The eventual success, I guess, of a company or a startup is not deemed by how much you know but how fast you learn.”

Resources Mentioned:

 

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