Courseroot: We rank the best online courses!

In this edition of Student Entrepreneur we speak with Courseroot. The interview is made in collaboration with Starterslift Tilburg, which is the center of Tilburg University for entrepreneurial students with great talent and ambition.

Could you briefly describe what the business involves and what it is trying to achieve?

Absolutely. So what I am trying to do with Courseroot is make it easier for prospective online students, like me, to find the right course in the subject they are looking for. Nowadays we see more and more amazing platforms pop up that provide high-quality online courses in their own way: some created by universities, others in partnerships with companies, and others provide courses created by accredited professionals. In pretty much every case, each platform provides at least a dozen of amazing courses that fit your criteria, but it’s impossible to cross-search and find out which is best. This is where Courseroot comes in. We not only aggregate and rank all these courses from the platforms, we allow you to filter through them based on price, level of difficulty, certificate quality, hours of content, and so forth.

When did you come up with the idea of starting your own business?

My first entrepreneurial project was a little silicon cable wrap I made to keep my headphones from tangling up all the time. This was I believe around 2 years ago nearing the end of my Bachelor. By this point I had slowly become aware of entrepreneurship and startups, and the possibility of actually creating things and building products. The project lasted for over a few months, designing the product, gathering some feedback, talking with prototype suppliers, talking with high scale production suppliers, and so forth. An incredible experience. In the end I decided to call it a day and focus on finishing my Bachelor, but from that moment I knew this is what I wanted to do.

In what way has the company evolved since its inception?

So, Courseroot is rather young. I started around 3-4 months ago with the initial concept. Did some feasibility checks, checked whether I could make it happen, and what I needed in order to do so. I then found out I had to expand some of my programming knowledge (I had only started programming front-end end of 2016) with back-end skills, so I taught myself the basics of PHP and MySQL over summer holiday. From that point on, it’s just been building the database and the website, incrementally improving it and implementing changes. The upcoming months it is all about promotion and search engine optimization; just making sure people find it in Google.

Can owning and running a business be combined easily with your study(s)?

Yes. Absolutely. Though dependent on how committed you are (to either one), it’s full-throttle pretty much all day, every day. I am currently in the last unit of my Master which means I only have to focus on my thesis. This gives some space to breathe again, which is very much appreciated: September and October where pretty hectic. Though still, I really need to start catching up with my thesis…

“If you find out you don’t like it; that’s nice to know. If you do; you just opened up a whole new exciting world.”

What skills have you acquired during your studies that can be applied to your daily business activities?

I guess there is a lot of basic knowledge and understanding on the core concepts of economics, business, and management that evidently really help out. Though, I think that probably the most beneficial skill I have taken out of my studies is the ability to learn. This is also one of the things that, if I may blow my own horn here for a bit, I think gives me an edge when it comes to running a startup. The first year – and this is what it seems like to me, I have yet to get further than month 5 so far – especially if you are a solo-founder or only have 1 co-founder, you need to be at least “pretty good” at nearly everything: designing your product, gathering feedback, developing and building the product, building relations, marketing, business analysis, search engine optimization, and on and on and on.. Only once you really get traction and have the freedom to make the first hires, you pretty much need to cover all those things yourself. So I guess the ability to take in new information and knowledge is probably the best thing I got from my studies.

Up to this point, what skills have you gained from the establishment of your business?

Some particular skills I have gained specifically from Courseroot over the last 4 months are:

-PHP and MySQL (programming languages)
-On-page SEO and off-page SEO (specifically link building)
-Improvement of HTML/CSS/Javascript/Jquery (programming languages)
-More in-depth skills in Excel
-Scraping data on the web
-Proper Email outreach
-Juggling projects (Courseroot, Master courses, Thesis)
-How to build an extensive business case
-How to build a funding round proposal
-Valuing an company/startup

How do you see the future of the company?

I believe, evidently, that Courseroot has a lot of potential when it comes to help students find the best course for whatever it is they want to achieve. Ideally, it will become a well-known brand and the go-to place when you want to learn something new; realistically, it will become one of the first few websites you come across in Google when you are searching for an online course. Either way, I would be very pleased.

Finally, what would you like to say to students who are also planning to start their own business?

Give it a shot. It’s as simple as that. If you find out you don’t like it; that’s nice to know. If you do; you just opened up a whole new exciting world. I think especially now that you are a student, there is very little to lose. You don’t have kids (assumption 1), you don’t have a mortgage (assumption 2), you don’t have high opportunity costs when it comes to a job. And what’s the worst thing that could happen? You won’t die (don’t hold me accountable on that). But do know that if you really want to build something awesome, it will take a lot of time and hard work. At the same time, if you love it, you’ll love it, and there will be nothing that can stop you.