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Ankur Nagpal

Hey there! I'm Ankur Nagpal, founder of Teachable. AMA 👇

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Teachable is an online platform that enables creators to earn a living from their knowledge. We helped 50,000+ creators teach over 50 million students and earn over $1B+ in the process. After Teachable was acquired in 2020 by Hotmart Technology, I started Vibe Capital -- a venture fund to invest in early-stage technology companies worldwide. Here to answer any questions regarding starting a company, fundraising, starting a fund, and/or everything about founder mindset! AMA 👇
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David Beckett
Thanks Ankur, I've been using the Teachable platform since 2017, fantastic tools, great development and upgrades. Very happy! Just wondering if you have raised money with online meetings only, and if you have one best tip for anyone doing so?
Ankur Nagpal
@pitchprof Our first investor ever was @brezina who I met in person + along with I'd estimate a third or so of our first round investors -- then again, this was in 2015 I don't think it matters too much today -- particularly for your first round of funding Now being on the other side of it, I almost exclusively end up investing in companies before meeting them BUT I'm an old school kinda person so I try pretty hard to meet up with the founders in the next year or so after investing in person make everything feel real
Jp Marín Díaz
Hi Ankur. We are building The App Store of Data Science for non-coders at Datasketch (https://datasketch.co). How can I reach you to send you a 2min video about us and if you find it interesting start a Vibe conversation?
Ankur Nagpal
@jpmarindiaz Twitter DM is best ! I read almost every one (even if I can't reply to every single one)
Gautham
Hi Ankur, Have you written / spoken in depth about how you got more and more teachers onto the platform? What were the tactics that really worked?
Ankur Nagpal
@g3mo I have actually! This thread is best for it : https://twitter.com/ankurnagpal/...
Gautham
@ankurnagpal This is great. Thank you I have a follow-up question, through Vibe capital, do you only do investments into fast growing / hyper-growth companies? Do you have any other investment models that is looking at linear growth companies too? I mean, it could be outside Vibe capital too.
Gonzalo Arzuaga
Hey Ankur, I'd like to get into your mind about the sale to Hotmart. If you "earned $1B+ in the process" why sell? Just curious. Thx
Ankur Nagpal
@garzuaga outlined a lot of our thinking here: https://medium.com/teachable/tea... the TL;DR is we thought our opportunity by partnering together was far greater than by going solo and Hotmart was really the only company where it made sense since we had so much in common and nothing but massive respect for the founders JP + Mateus
Gonzalo Arzuaga
@ankurnagpal thx for replying. Interesting that from Latinamerica they grew larger, lots of food for thought when it comes to new opportunities. Cheers,
Emanuele Caldari
If you were to launch a product that breaks the most widespread human prejudice: "Nobody gives you anything", how would you attract credibility without going through the smoke salesman? Let me explain, if you want to launch an app that makes you earn money simply by living your life without asking for anything in return, what would you do? If your product partly reflects the dream of many people: "Earn money without doing anything" and at the same time breaks the most common prejudice in society: "Nobody gives you anything". How would you solve the problem? I'm curious about your answer. Thank you!
Michael Gaffney
what have you learned about profitability in starting and investing in businesses?
Ankur Nagpal
@mgaffneyny Maybe I'm a boomer but we always operated Teachable in a way that we were ~3-6 months away from not hiring anyone to be profitable -- so never profitable, and being profitable wasn't our goal but being within touching distance of it allowed me to sleep well at night It isn't realistic for every single business -- but for us, it was the right balance between raising venture money when we could but having full control of our destiny As a result, it allowed us to have minimal dilution while raising rounds (our most recent round ~2 years before acq. was $4M on a $130M premoney) and having full board control
Misha Akbar
Hi Ankur! Thank you for your post! As someone with ZERO technical background, I am unsure of what is the next step I should focus on as I start to think about my business idea. My area of focus currently is the United Arab Emirates where there is significant focus on removing the stigma around mental health. My start up idea is to create a marketplace for mental health resources and professionals, making them easily accessible to people and removing the stigma around mental health. Users will be able to schedule and book appointments through the website or app. I plan to introduce some amount of gamification to encourage user adoption. Should my next step be to build a landing page of sorts and get an interest list started?
Dhruv Bhatia
Are you open to investing in more community-focused startups (or would you not want to invest in more startups in the same space as Circle)?
Byrne O'conner
Hey Ankur, did you happen to code whole product or out source it. What's your suggestion being from non coding background for someone looking to build product ?
Doug
My team and I are in the last stages of our consumer software MVP build, we estimate we will launch in roughly 2 months. So far we've completely bootstrapped. At what point should we go beyond just introducing ourselves to funds and begin investment engagement? Should we hire a consultant?
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