BC Business
The software-as-a-service company enables clients to create and distribute their own courses of instruction.
Thinkific staff on a team retreat before the COVID-19 pandemic
As education of every kind goes virtual in the wake of COVID-19, Thinkific has been putting on a master class. The Vancouver company, co-founded by CEO Greg Smith in 2012, lets entrepreneurs and businesses create and sell online courses. Unlike other such learning outfits, which profit by handling course development and distribution, it gives users control of their work, like e-commerce platform Shopify does with merchants.
More than 50,000 clients now use Thinkific’s subscription-based service; their courses have reached 25 million people in 190 countries. Business only accelerated as the pandemic took hold, with a 200-percent increase in course creation from March through September.
By early 2022, Thinkific plans to triple its team to 500. The company, which recently announced $22 million in funding from Vancouver-based Rhino Ventures, an early investor, is posting year-over-year revenue growth of roughly 150 percent. Thinkific projects that, by 2025, its course creators will expand their total haul from today’s $650 million to $1.5 billion.