One of the cool things of being in an growing* startup ecosystem is seeing everyone around you grow as the entire industry develops and matures. One of those people I know is Colin Kinner who founded Startup Onramp out of Queensland to better educate new founders.
We both share a dislike of the overly American-based founder education out there so I jumped at the chance to sit down and do an interview with them for their new Founders Course – a no-bs Australian based approach to founder education. Check it out here.
In the interview below we cover some introductory topics on how to think about and approach new startup ideas.
The course has 30 modules which is more about practical information rather than big personalities. I have a huge aversion to ‘get rich quick’ education crowd or ‘how to be successful’ courses. The other thing I like is that it’s comprehensive, covering lots of topics, and features lots of interviews with doers and founders. I think it also has global appeal for anyone in growing startup cities.
I put all of these new ‘micro courses’ as part of the next wave of education hitting the market and its exciting to watch (add in coder courses, digital skills and micro-credentials to the list).
From consumer perspective, while you can go on YouTube and find lots of interesting videos and lectures from successful founders I find that the info is rarely practical. Its good to get you inspired but that’s about it. The other thing I’ve noticed is consumers are seeing lots more value in organised and useful information presented to them in a convenient way – and happy to pay for it. Which partly why online course builders are seeing a huge surge in growth during COVID19**.
Let me know what you think of the course if you sign up!
Footnotes
*Australia goes up and down in innovation rankings but Sydney and Melbourne pretty consistently get ranked among the top growing ecosystems. Currently Sydney is ranked at 23 according to Startup Genome 2019 report.
**Teachable, one of the popular course builders has made more money in the past few months then all of last year – the shift to online education has had a huge push
