Ankur Nagpal

Josh Pigford on April 01, 2019

 

Founder Chats is brought to you by Baremetrics: zero-setup subscription analytics & insights for Stripe, Recurly, Braintree and any other subscription company!

Like this episode? A rating and a review on iTunes would go a long way!

This week I talk with Ankur Nagpal, Founder of Teachable! In this episode we talk about living in the Middle East, moving to America at 17, starting a Facebook apps business making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, building on platforms vs creating platforms, reverse engineering growth and a lot more!

Show Notes

  • 1:00- Weirdest course on teachable
  • 1:50- Backstory
  • 3:09- Playing Cricket
  • 3:40- Starting a business as a kid
  • 5:16- Parents thoughts on building stuff on the web
  • 6:22- Fostering an entrepreneurial spirit
  • 8:00- Moving to America
  • 9:25- Learning to code and working for Facebook
  • 10:19- Branching into more frivolous applications
  • 12:20- Interning at Amazon and going to school
  • 13:48- Being “all-in” on the Facebook stuff
  • 14:13- “The bottom fell out multiple times”
  • 17:15- Spending time figuring out Facebook’s algorithms
  • 18:48- Consulting and new business ideas
  • 20:32- Stumbling upon the idea for Teachable
  • 21:46- Building the first version
  • 22:40- Hacking together existing tools to pull it together
  • 23:33- Direct sales
  • 25:30- Self-perpetuating momentum and building too many features
  • 28:48- Learning valuable skills from the fundraising process
  • 30:00- Fundraising when you don’t need the money
  • 31:00- Rebuilding the foundation and making the numbers grow
  • 33:08- Accidental email
  • 34:15- Growth- deconstructing and working backwards
  • 36:03- Changing the name from Fedora to Teachable
  • 38:44- The mission and people owning their own stuff
  • 39:55- Traditional education versus learning online
  • 41:15- Being a creator, building an audience, and monetizing that audience
  • 42:23- The next year at Teachable
  • 43:23- Being excited to have other executives

Get in touch with Ankur: teachable.com, @ankurnagpal

Josh Pigford