Thought Industries Reports Robust Growth for Customer Education: 50% Q1 Revenue Increase, New Enterprise Customers, 31 New Hires

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May 06, 2021, 07:00 ET

BOSTON, May 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Thought Industries, the world's #1 platform for customer education, today announced a successful first quarter as revenue grew 50 percent over last year – fueled by strong growth in new enterprise customers and expanded business from existing customers. Thought Industries also added 31 new hires in the quarter and was ranked as the number two overall learning system by The Craig Weiss Group – and the best for customer, partner, and member education.

New and existing customers selected Thought Industries to create compelling learning experiences and grow revenue via increased brand awareness, faster product adoption, and sustained customer loyalty. Key growth markets include software-as-a-service, manufacturing, healthcare and other industries with complex products and training requirements.

As an example, The Linux Foundation extended its investment during Q1 to help scale open-source education programs to support more than 100,000 annual users worldwide. Training and certification have become a multi-million dollar funding source for the non-profit, which upgraded from a mix of homegrown and external systems in 2020. The fast-growing home for 300+ open source projects had a complex education use case, providing a mix of instructor-led training, paid courses, and certification exams for companies and developers globally via hosted and white-label services.

"With our previous system, it always felt like we were living on the ragged edge of disaster," said Clyde Seepersad, senior vice president for training and certification at The Linux Foundation. "Thought Industries provides an integrated system with built-in authoring, e-commerce, and multi-tenant delivery capabilities that we needed to continue our growth. One of the things we really want out of a partnership is product innovation, not just operational execution. We need a partner that does this for a living. Thought Industries is very responsive and a great partner, with a much more elegant solution than what we had before."

Organizations across industries are increasing their investment in customer education initiatives, as reflected in a new study by Thought Industries and analyst Claire Schooley. The majority are investing 30-plus percent more than pre-pandemic levels, with 30 percent launching brand new customer and partner education programs. Looking ahead, businesses expect even more investment in external training for 2021, with nearly 60 percent planning increases in headcount and technology spend.

"We're amazed at all the creative things customers are doing to grow their businesses via the Thought Industries platform," said Barry Kelly, CEO, Thought Industries. "Customer education is clearly on the upswing, as organizations realize that every dollar invested can reduce churn and increase revenues. We will continue to invest in new products, services, and partners that help companies deliver high-value, high-quality learning experiences to grow their business."

Additional Q1 highlights include:

Thought Industries launched a new Reporting Hub to deliver advanced insights into customer education performance, including detailed program-level analytics.
Thought Industries and video assessment provider Bongo announced a new partnership to allow remote learners to practice and demonstrate their competency via recorded videos.
Thought Industries announced plans to host its annual COGNITION user conference virtually from September 21-23. See agenda and registration details here.
Thought Industries was named one of Forbes' Best Startup Employers for 2021, its second year in a row on the list. Thought Industries was also named one of the best midsize companies to work for in Boston via Built In's 2021 Best Places to Work Awards.
Thought Industries raised more than $85,000 for the Valiant Knights and continued its work with the Van Noy Valor Foundation.

About Thought Industries
Thought Industries powers the business of learning by providing the world's leading B2B customer education and extended enterprise platform. The company was founded in 2014 around the core belief that online learning experiences should be modern, intuitive, engaging, and scalable. Today, our team builds and maintains the only learning solution with completely native tools and integrations that drive higher engagement, learner proficiency, and retention rates for our customers. Headquartered in Boston, Thought Industries has offices across North America and Europe.

SOURCE Thought Industries