If you work in an industry requiring continual professional development, you will understand well the problem LearnFormula is addressing.
“It makes sense why they would have this kind of requirement,” says LearnFormula CEO, Mike Katsevman. “It's to continuously educate and bring workers up to speed with new changes, etc. But what actually happens is most people who are forced into these hours don't want to be there. They click next, next, next on the training and don't actually pay attention to it.”
Fields like accounting, law, human resources, engineering, and project management – Katsevman estimates about 10 per cent of jobs – require annual training, but professionals are often left to seek their own qualifying, lacklustre courses. LearnFormula’s marketplaces allows them to compare, access, and enroll in accredited courses, packages, and certificate programs for their profession.
“We brought in a one-stop shop for people to be able to compare much more easily what they want to enroll in and what they want to pursue. It's more clarity to an end user to be able to make an informed decision.”
Katsevman speaks from experience. As an accountant, he found learning options to be inconsistent in quality and price. Wading through a thousand disorganized offerings across websites was a frustrating yearly chore.
That experience led him and co-founder/CTO, Dmitriy Khasanov to find a better way. They focused first on aggregating accounting programs – organizing them, pricing them, and adding public ratings. The platform has since expanded to support 20 industries across 11 countries and seeks to scale to over 200 professions in three years, including in social work and pharmacy.
Central to LearnFormula's success is its collaboration with over 2,000 content partners worldwide who retain their intellectual property as content creators and receive a portion of revenue from their videos. That content is reviewed by team members to ensure that only the best are included. In addition, the company’s new AI tool promises to ease and enhance content creation and presentation.
Katsevman says that LearnFormula has benefited enormously from the local talent pool drawn to Markham’s business parks and Commerce Valley; an extremely supportive mayor who opened doors for them; and a Board of Trade and business development unit that have facilitated introductions and collaborations. He adds that the proximity to vendors, creators, and parallel industries all make it easy for businesses to thrive.
“We could've moved anywhere, but we told our realtor it has to be here. For a company that's fast growing, there’s no better ecosystem…. I can't think of a better area to have an office. Markham is Canada’s Silicon Valley.”
While the 3,500-square-foot office houses more than a dozen team members (and the requisite ping pong table), others spann the globe, from London, Ont., to Brazil to Serbia. Katsevman credits a committed and passionate team for helping the company to grow exponentially over the past few years. Now he is hoping to attract even more staffers who “share a passion for fixing problems in the continuing education space” to their collaborative and transparent workplace.
