PLG & Growth·Greg Smith, Thinkific

Thinkific: From $29 Online Course to $60M ARR SaaS Company

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Greg Smith is the co-founder and CEO of Thinkific, a platform for entrepreneurs and businesses to create, market, and sell online courses and other digital products.

In 2005, Greg, a law student, began teaching LSAT prep courses in-person, later converting it into a $29 online course that eventually earned him $10k per month.

Seeing growing demand for online courses, Greg and his brother Matt launched a basic product in 2012 to simplify creating and selling digital courses.

In the first 3 years, they experienced numerous pivots and setbacks, struggling to validate their product and business model and acquire customers.

After failing to validate their early product concepts, the brothers shifted their strategy. They started manually building online courses for each new customer.

This hands-on, time-intensive approach generated early revenue and gave the founders vital customer insights they needed to develop their software platform.

In 2015, after launching their new software, they had a breakthrough moment when a webinar resulted in 20 customers immediately paying $1,000 each.

After 5 years of persistence and hard work, the founders hit $10 million ARR, fueled by customer referrals, content marketing, and strategic partnerships.

Today, Thinkific, with a 280-person team, generates about $60 million in ARR and has raised over $200 million primarily through its IPO in 2021.

This episode is part of our PLG & Growth series.

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