Number
Thinkific has a $1B+ market cap — investors are paying for the payments business
Sam notes course platform Thinkific went public with a $1B+ market cap on tiny sales. Ankur (Teachable founder, which sold for ~$250M on ~$25M sales) says the premium comes from saved-card payments revenue — once buyers start spending they keep buying.
$1000M
Thinkific market cap · USD
“It's over a billion dollars their market cap is. And I asked Ankur. So our friend Ankur, he started this company called Teachable. When Teachable sold, they sold for, I think, $250 million.”
Idea
Aerist: build text-message courses (Teachable over SMS)
Shaan surfaces Aerist (aerist.co), a platform for building courses delivered as text-message drips instead of landing pages — learners get daily nuggets via SMS. He plans to try making one to teach how to start businesses.
“Basically these guys are letting you build a course like Teachable just through text message delivery. So it's aerist.co. And so you can go on, I could be like, hey, I'm gonna teach you how to start businesses.”
Number
Teachable: ~$20M revenue, sold for ~$200-250M
Shaan recaps the Teachable acquisition: the online course platform was doing about $20M in revenue and sold for roughly $200-250M, around the level of its last private round.
$250M
Acquisition price · USD
“They were at like $20 million or so in revenue. I think they sold for closer to $200, $250 million.”