From humble beginnings in a residential garage, workplace learning platform Go1 has skyrocketed to a $3 billion valuation and earned the title of Brisbane's first ‘unicorn’ business.
Now with over 1,000 employees across 13 global offices - including the United States, South Africa, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, and Malaysia - Go1 stands as the world's largest learning ecosystem, shaping the future of online learning for organisations globally.
Founded in Logan in 2015 by friends Vu Tran, Andrew Barnes, Chris Eigeland, and Chris Hood, Go1 received $178,000 in Advance Queensland’s Ignite Ideas funding to launch its platform tech for Android and iOS in 2016. Two years later, they received a further $250,000 in funding to help market a personal training assistant platform.
The company now connects over 300 content providers with more than 8 million professional learners around the world.
Co-founder and co-CEO Andrew Barnes explains that the concept works in a similar way to Airbnb in that Go1 doesn’t create its own training courses.
“Our solutions are centred around the access to and curation of learning content in organisations,” he said.
“We partner with high-quality content from leading content providers across skills, topics, languages and formats, and then match professional learners with the right content using advanced content intelligence on the individual learner and the content itself.”
Go1 integrates with over 75 human resource and learning platforms, connecting learners with content that is embedded in the tools they already use.
During COVID-19, they launched the Go1 Learning app for Microsoft Teams, making it easier for people to find, consume, share, and discuss learning resources from within their Teams environment.
To date, Go1 has raised over USD $400 million in funding from investors AirTree Ventures, Blue Cloud Ventures, Five Sigma, Insight Partners, Madrona, Salesforce Ventures, SEEK Investments and SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
The company was also part of the famous Y Combinator startup accelerator program in the US, a program responsible for launching success stories such as Airbnb, Doordash, Dropbox, Instacart, Reddit, Stripe, and Twitch.
Co-CEO and co-founder Chris Eigeland said the Ignite Ideas funding from Advance Queensland enabled Go1 to build a more intuitive platform experience and fuelled their vision to reach one billion learners to connect them with the upskilling, reskilling and knowledge tools they need to unlock their potential.
“We are grateful to Advance Queensland for their ongoing support and the work that they continue to do in supporting the next generation of business founders and innovators,” Mr Eigeland said.
“Queensland is home to some of the country’s most innovative and entrepreneurial talent, and we are proud to call Logan home today to our global headquarters.
“By giving startups the support they need to grow and make their ideas happen, they too can achieve great success and deliver economic benefits to the wider Australian economy and community.”
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