How Growth Factory Built Course Ecosystem with EducateMe: A 5x Growth in Students

A prospecting learning hub for software development entrepreneurs and IT executives, Growth Factory is a successful academy that delivers online courses and incubator programs, organizes coaching sessions, and shares expertise with product company owners around Europe.

Faced with rapid growth and the need to build their learning ecosystem, Growth Factory found a solution in EducateMe. This partnership helped them grow from one course with around 50 students to a chain of programs with over 250 students.

The 1st product by Growth Factory on the EducateMe platform had around 40 students. Today, there are 5 of them applying different learning approaches. 

How it all started?

We sat down with Anna Iurieva, Head of Delivery Manager at Growth Factory, to know why they picked EducateMe to build the first courses and how they used it for effective delivery.

Challenges Growth Factory Faced: What Are They?

From the beginning, the academy already had a knowledge base and community, yet, wanted a place to organize the learning and deliver quality courses with assignments, live sessions, and tracking. 

Anna had “a clear understanding of what was required for the organization”, but still there were certain needs that the team wanted to address. They looked for:

• Simple and functional platform to build a centralized ecosystem.
• A place for convenient and automated content management.
• Ability to effectively handle assignments or events and track students' performance.

Challenge#1: A need for an intuitive platform to build a learning ecosystem

Growth Factory, with extensive experience in selling business e-learning products, wanted to offer courses that go beyond organizing sessions and sharing content e-books. 

Now, they sought a solution that could include assignments, structure lessons, embed content, and track the student’s performance. Besides, they looked for an LMS with a user experience that would be a breeze for their audience.

Solution: Organized system with intuitive course delivery 

EducateMe’s dedication to user experience was crucial for Growth Factory’s choice. With an intuitive interface, clear lesson structure, and tracking capabilities, the academy could cover the basic needs and seek towards program scaling. 

Challenge #2: A need for effective content and event management 

With a professional community and a developed knowledge base, Growth Factory sought effective ways to link that expertise to the courses.

Live sessions allowed sharing of expertise and insights, while videos were integral to their knowledge base. It is fair to say they were the organization’s learning core. 

So, yes, Growth Factory wanted a way to manage accesses, content uploads, and repurposing effectively. Even if the number of students or groups would grow.

Solution#1: Leveraging Zoom integration and LMS Calendar

EducateMe helped Growth Factory to set and automate the flow to organize live sessions and record them. Thanks to the LMS calendar and integration with Zoom, the academy managed to schedule events, send notifications, and make recordings automatically. 

It only required them to connect Growth Factory Zoom accounts to the EducateMe calendar.

Solution #2: Using the flexible content editor to the fullest

Growth Factory significantly benefited from EducuateMe features for content embedding, upload, and duplication. Today, Anna says that if they have all the materials at hand and in one place, it will take up to a day to set a foundation for a new course. 

Challenge #3 A need for assignments and feedback tracking

Lastly, the assignments and feedback administration were other major points for choosing the learning software. Before all, Growth Factory has multiple student groups with mentors, meaning it may be hard to track all the tasks and activities. 

Growth Factory wanted to keep this flow organized and maintain a high level of student and mentor participation. At the same time, it is one of the factors they use to define the quality of their products, alongside other metrics.

Solution#1: Progress and assignment tracking 

EducateMe pays particular attention to progress tracking on different levels, including assignments, participation, and course completion. And that was extremely beneficial to Growth Factory when keeping an eye on task competition and student engagement. 

Solution#2: Feedback collection and learning analytics

With solid learning analytics, EducateMe brought great opportunities for Growth Factory in terms of engagement and satisfaction analysis. The academy could easily collect feedback and measure satisfaction rates. Based on that, they could have data to analyze and improve their products.

Key Factors for EducateMe Implementation: Support and Custom Solutions

When Growth Factory was choosing the platform, they wanted a solution to deliver courses. At that point, they were using WorkPlace by Meta, and considered such platforms as Thinkific, Kajabi, and Circle.

There, simplicity and organization were key factors. However, what reassured Growth Factory was the support during onboarding and course implementation. 

Even though some of Growth Factory’s requests do not fall under EducateMe’s roadmap, the support team tries to find custom solutions or alternatives. 

For instance, the organization wanted to build learning around its community and thus asked to categorize materials by topics. In just two weeks after the request meeting, the EducateMe Product Team came up with a Course Library feature to back the company’s desire to bring better structure and tags. 

Key Result: System that Delivers

As Anna says the true indicator of success is that GrowthFactory “managed to launch their first courses in the desired format”.

Since then, the number of learning products has continued to grow, even though Growth Factory uses EducateMe mostly for short-term and mid-term courses and incubator programs. 

Growth of a number of courses

In the beginning, the academy started with only 1 course. Now, Growth Factory has successfully implemented at least 5 products, including 2 incubator programs, the Growth Accelerator Program, and a huge course for founders of software development companies.

Increase in the number of students 

If the first course had only 44 active students. Now, Growth Factory has 250+ active students, with the biggest course having around 100+ learners.

What’s up next?

Growth Factory is looking for a new place to host their community, and it is a challenge for them to deal with in the next few months. 

Will it choose EducateMe to host their community next? Only time will tell. Yet, it doesn’t stop Anna from recommending this LMS to her colleagues:

Ready to scale your learning business like Growth Factory? Contact us today to see how EducateMe can help you achieve your goals.