Online course platform Thinkific raises $22M to meet surging demand in online courses

Coronavirus pandemic has forever changed the way we do everything including the way we learn. Gone are the days where you have to sit in a crowded classroom where you cannot study at your own pace. The pandemic has also accelerated the need for online learning. That’s where Thinkific comes in.

Thinkific is a Vancouver, Canada-based ed-tech startup that makes it easy for a business of any size to create, market, and sell their own customized online courses. Thinkific is the leading platform for creating and selling online courses. Thinkific helps businesses grow by sharing their knowledge, skills, passions or expertise with the world. To date, Thinkific has helped more than 50,000 entrepreneurs and businesses worldwide earn more than $650M through online courses.

Today, Thinkific announced it has closed $22 million in growth financing. The round was led by Vancouver-based Rhino Ventures, who were early investors in the company, and brings the total raised to date to $25 million. Thinkific has been profitable since 2018 yet chose to raise additional funding to accelerate product innovation and continue shaping the future of online courses.

Founded in 2012 by Greg Smith, Matt Payne, Matt Smith, and Miranda Lievers, Thinkific is a software platform that enables entrepreneurs to create, market, sell, and deliver their own online courses. Thinkific’s all-in-one SaaS platform makes it incredibly simple for anyone, even those without technical experience, to create and deliver their own online courses. Thinkific is easy to use, fully customizable, and packs powerful out-of-the-box eCommerce functionality that lets anyone sell their training to a global audience.

“Thinkific is changing the face of digital commerce by empowering every entrepreneur and business to earn revenue and make a meaningful impact teaching what they know,” said Greg Smith, co-founder & CEO of Thinkific. Thinkific is also tripling its workforce, hiring an additional 350 team members over the next 18 months.

The financing comes at a time when the online course market (forecasted in 2019 to be worth $350B by 2025) has rapidly accelerated due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since March, Thinkific has seen a 200% increase in online courses being created on its platform. Online training is skyrocketing across every industry – from solopreneurs teaching guitar fundamentals, business coaching, and fitness training, to large organizations like a commerce platform, Shopify, and social media platform, Hootsuite, who use Thinkific to teach their customers about entrepreneurship and social media.

Thinkific is experiencing close to 150% year-over-year revenue growth. To date, revenue generated by Thinkific course creators surpassed half a billion dollars and is expected to top 1.5 billion dollars in 2021. 50,000-course creators use Thinkific to educate over 25 million people.