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How does Go1 think about investing in other companies?

At Go1, our mission is to unlock the positive of potential of over a billion people through a love of learning. The main ways we’re doing that is by building the world’s best content for corporate learning and by investing in other companies who are building amazing things.

Tom Gole, EVP Strategy

2021-11-19

From time to time, the question comes up: does Go1 invest in other companies? We think about that question in the context of how we achieve our mission to unlock positive potential through a love of learning.

There is so much potential in the world, and so many opportunities to help people learn better. We see this every day in how fostering a love of learning can help people get new jobs, be more effective at their work, deliver better for their customers, and develop themselves as individuals. The world is moving quickly, and learning needs to as well.

At Go1, the main way we’re helping to unlock that potential is by building the world’s best subscription library for corporate learning, and by opening up our technology for content creators to deliver excellent training to their customers directly. We think there’s a better way to get access to the learning and development experiences employers, employees, and citizens need, and we’re proud to be building it at Go1.

However, we’re not the only people with amazing ideas about how to unlock people’s positive potential, and how to make learning and development better. There are lots and lots of great companies out there making products that we think are pretty great, and so wherever we can we like to help those companies succeed.

One way we do that is by working with our content partners and our affiliate partners to help them build great businesses of their own. For content partners, that often looks like providing an additional income stream by being part of Go1 Premium. And on top of that, providing them with data and analytics to identify what the next great bit of content they should build is.

It could also look like using Go1 Connect to deliver their content to wherever they want it to be. For our affiliate partners, that looks like providing Go1 Premium alongside their own great products to produce an amazing L&D experience for their customers.

Another way we do that is by investing in great companies who are building amazing things we want to see in the world, and our investment can help catalyze. We’re not a VC fund, but we do like backing great companies where we think one plus one can be (much, much) greater than two.

One example of this is News Over Audio (Noa). Noa makes it convenient for time-sensitive people to understand and know more about the news that matters, in minutes. Their editors work with some of the world’s biggest publications to curate and consciously package articles in a way that guides you through the biggest news topics. Their team of celebrated narrators then read these articles word-for-word so that you can listen anytime, anywhere.

Why we have invested in Noa is that we see in them a company that is building a great product to make it easier for people to learn about the world around them. In this case, by putting great content into a format that is easier for people to find time to understand. We think Noa’s product is highly complementary with Go1’s own, so much so that we offer every Noa listener a Go1 learner record so they can connect up all of the things they’re learning. We also offer Noa subscriptions to all of our own staff for free.

Another set of examples are companies we have partnered with to co-fund the creation of amazing content we want to see in the world. Our content partners are building fantastic learning experiences, and when the right opportunity comes up for us to catalyze that content being made sooner, better, we co-fund its creation.

A great example of this is our work with social impact organizations to help them create L&D content so that the impact of their missions can live on in the workplace. We're proud of our work with organisations like Challenge DV and Beyond Blue, that has brought learning experiences on important social topics that people can watch and re-watch at their own pace.

So hopefully that’s given you a taste of how Go1 thinks about our mission of unlocking positive potential through a love of learning, and how investing in other companies can help achieve that mission.