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How Rasmus Vinge Helped Start CyberPilot which has Grown to More than 50,000 Users a Month
- Who: Rasmus Vinge
- Website: cyberpilot.io
- Course Topic: Cyber Security
- Interesting Stats: 17 Full-Time Employees + 12 Student Workers
Who are you and what digital training company have you created?
My name is Rasmus, I’m the CEO and one of the founders of CyberPilot. CyberPilot is a Danish cyber security company where we create online courses for companies and their employees. We were founded in 2016 and used some years to figure out how to create good courses, a journey that is ongoing. Today we create courses that are being sent out to more than 50,000 users bi-monthly and we are active in 6 different countries.
What market does your digital training serve?
We operate in the B2B cyber security market. It’s a market that historically has been focusing on technology, anti-virus systems, firewalls, and so on. We saw a gap in the market as not many companies were focusing on the employees, and the users, even though 9 out of 10 cyber security breaches are caused by human error. Therefore, we started focusing on cyber security culture and creating courses to strengthen the employees in their daily life. This started our journey in the course-creation world.
What’s the biggest benefit of taking your online courses?
It’s a fast way of spreading knowledge and awareness about cyber security and the GDPR in a whole company. It would take a long time for companies to create the courses themselves and handle all the administration of users. By taking our courses they make sure that the topics are top of mind for all employees. You get courses on an ongoing basis, therefore the topics will STAY top of mind.
How did you get into the market?
As mentioned, the idea came from analyzing the market. One of our founders was a cyber security consultant and already had a lot of knowledge. He was the one who saw that many companies forgot the employees in the cyber security work. We actually started with several products, both technical solutions, and courses. We tried to test it all and we quickly realized from the feedback that companies needed cyber security and GDPR courses. From then, we focused more and more on creating better and better courses.
Why did you decide to create a digital training company?
We saw it as an effective way of scaling up our company in a cost-effective way while creating a strong cyber security culture for many companies.
Did you have any moments of doubt before you launched your training company?
We instantly accepted that we weren’t going to be good enough from day one. The whole idea was to make the fastest possible prototype of a course and accept that it wasn’t the final product but still launch it as it if it was. -… Click To TweetIt made it possible for us to move fast and get instant feedback from our first customers. We had doubts but we thought the best way to approach the doubts was to jump straight into them, take the beatings and use them to improve our courses.
What are your online courses like?
Our courses are online e-learning courses that consist of three parts. It starts with a small animation video created in Vyond that runs for 1-2 minutes. The second part is a bunch of knowledge slides with text and images. The last part is a small quiz with 4-5 questions about the topic. The course takes no more than 6-7 minutes to complete. We create the whole course in an authoring tool called Articulate 360.
How long does it take you or your team to create a new course?
We launch courses bi-monthly, which also means we use around 2 months creating a course. First, we brainstorm topics by seeing what’s up in the cyber security world right now and by talking to our customers about their concerns in their everyday life. Then we create a rough first draft and receive feedback internally from the product team. Afterward, we get feedback from the rest of the CyberPilot-company. In the last round, we also get feedback from some of our customers before publishing the course. They secure that the courses represent the world and the challenges they see. It’s an iterative process of creating, getting feedback creating, getting feedback. The more feedback we get the better the courses we get.
Tell us a little about the process of launching your first course and getting your first enrollment(s).
We launched our first courses on an open-source platform called Moodle where all users and companies were created. We used a lot of time manually sending out reminder mail if people didn’t complete the courses and then calling our stakeholders in the different companies to get feedback on the courses.
Do you have a lead magnet?
Today we have two lead magnets. We have an e-book about the importance of employees in cyber security work and then we also have a free trial where you can try out 3 of our courses.
What’s the traffic strategy that works best for you?
We try to use many different channels. We use paid ads, we do some social selling, we focus on SEO and we also have some resellers. Where paid ads are a fast way of getting traffic today, we see social selling and SEO as long-term strategies that might take time to develop.
What online course platform are you using?
We don’t use a platform like Teachable or Thinkific. Instead, we started on an open-source platform called moodle but today we use another LMS where it is easier to administrate companies and their employees. We don’t just create users but need to structure them in companies as we sell B2B.
Do you like it?
It works for our needs today.
Are there any features you wish it had?
I think the reporting tools could be better in all the LMS platforms I’ve seen. It is obvious that the SCORM-format has a lot of good qualities but there are also some reporting limitations which are the price you pay if you want to use SCORM-packages.
What made you decide to use your chosen platform over others?
We needed a platform where we could create and administer several companies and all their employees. It wasn’t just about uploading a course and publishing it for the world. We needed control of users, companies, reporting, and everything.
What other tools do you use to run your digital training business?
To do the courses we use:
- Articulate 360 as an authoring tool
- Vyond to do animations
Besides that, we use a bunch of different marketing tools and sales tools to grow our business. Here we use things such as Ahrefs and HubSpot.
What books or training programs have you found useful on your journey to a successful business owner that others might find valuable too?
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
Do you have any big mistakes you’ve made along the way that you’d be willing to share?
CyberPilot and I have made plenty of mistakes. We started on an expensive LMS platform which was in no way the best solution for us at the time. It meant we had to migrate to Moodle early on in our journey, and we probably should have started on Moodle right away.
Please share some idea of revenue for your digital training company.
We are not interested in sharing our revenue, but we can say that we are now 17 full-time employees + 12 student workers. We have +300 companies as customers with more than 50.000 employees who are enrolled in our courses which are available in 7 different languages with more to come.
Please tell us a little about what the money you’ve earned from running your digital training company has done for you.
The idea was always to create a business and not just a freelance e-learning course. This means that all the revenue has been re-invested in the company. It’s been used for great employees, an office, and all the tools we use to run the company.
In addition to revenue are there any numbers you would like to share?
As mentioned, we try to drive visitors to our website through many different channels. One of them is organically through our blog where we try to share as much knowledge about cyber security and GDPR as possible. Today we have more than 3000 visitors each month organically, so that’s without including paid ads, social selling, e-mail marketing, and much more.
What has creating your digital training business done for you personally?
It really taught me that content is king. You can have the coolest LMS platform and the newest tech in the world but if your course content is boring, irrelevant, or doesn’t hit your target group none of that matters. It’s opened my eyes to how important it is to communicate our knowledge in the best possible way.
What advice do you have for people just starting out? What do you wish you knew before you started?
Don’t fear making mistakes. Just make them and learn from them.
Try to get feedback from customers or test users as fast as possible. They are the ones who know what they want to pay for. - Rasmus Vinge Click To TweetLearn more about Rasmus Vinge of cyberpilot.io:
