What is Skilljar?

Skilljar provides businesses with an easy and powerful online course platform. Our clients are using the platform to generate leads, sell training, and improve customer success.

What’s your traction been like thus far?

We are powering hundreds of online courses across our network, with thousands of student registrations. Our clients include a fitness brand in Boston, a Salesforce consulting team in San Francisco, and a test prep company in Australia.

What do you know now that you wish you would have known when you started Skilljar?

Always sell ahead of feature development. It’s much easier to build the right features when there is a concrete user who needs it.

What’s a hypothesis that you’ve had that has failed? And how did you respond?

Skilljar was originally a consumer search engine for online courses (like Kayak.com). We built and launched an MVP. However, the conversion rates were abysmal and we couldn’t convince ourselves that we had a path to a sustainable business model. In the meantime, course creators kept asking for a simple way to deliver their learning content, so we pivoted to focus on their needs instead.

What’s your favorite startup in Seattle? (Besides your own!)

Popforms! Kate Matsudaira is creating amazing content around career development – a topic area which is sorely underserved. I’m also grateful that Popforms was an early Skilljar customer too.

What’s your favorite thing about being an entrepreneur?

Working with amazingly talented people (team, investors, customers) who are hugely motivated to make this a success.

What’s your favorite local sports team?

I grew up on the East Coast, so I’m loyal to the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Redskins….

If your company were an animal, what would it be and why?

A monkey – they learn really fast and adapt to their environment.

If you were to take Skilljar on a date, where would it want to go?

Town Hall Seattle. Since we’re in the online learning industry, we’d pick an interesting lecture or guest speaker at Town Hall, then talk about it afterwards at a hipster bar in Capitol Hill.