Thinkific’s App Store is the first marketplace of its kind to address the surging online course industry, and an ambitious new component of Thinkific’s growing commerce ecosystem. It represents a new and key advancement for the Company, one which it intends to invest in and scale extensively to ensure its course creators have access to best-in-class tools to run and scale their businesses and capitalize on the growing USD $350 billion online education market.*
Developers can now create and sell custom applications for the Thinkific . In doing so, they access a global market of more than 50,000 active course creators across 165 countries who earned over USD $275 million in revenue from direct course sales on the platform in 2020 alone.
“We remain relentlessly focused on enhancing the course creator experience and providing them with the tools they need to grow their businesses and deliver world-class courses to their communities,” said Greg Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of Thinkific. “With the launch of the Thinkific App Store we’re seriously advancing this ambition, connecting developers directly to our customers who can now even more easily, and with no technical experience, build the vision they have for their business and supercharge their growth.”
Through the Thinkific App Store, course creators are now able to more fully customize their courses and other learning products, market their businesses, and simplify their processes. The store and all apps are managed through the Thinkific platform, which has been designed for ease of use and seamless integration. This ensures that course creators can easily customize their courses to include unique and sophisticated functionality without technical knowledge.
According to Neha Varshneya, Senior Manager, Platform Marketing, “Thinkific is heavily invested in empowering, supporting and growing our new developer community. Our ambition is for them to play a key role in our growth story as we continue to scale to meet the incredible demand we’re seeing from course creators. We spent a considerable amount of time working with our creator community, our existing developer partners and our own internal team to design an app store that was flexible enough to meet the needs of every customer on Thinkific, whether they’re just starting out or delivering courses to millions of people every week across the globe. Now out of beta, we are excited to officially launch the Thinkific App Store to market.”
The Thinkific App Store will launch with 30 apps across four key categories:
- Student experience – functionality that encourages and increases student engagement. Apps at launch include: Zoom (live lessons), Lessonspace (visual collaboration), and Motrain (gamification).
- Scaling – specialized tools to help course creators scale their business, reach new audiences and increase revenue. Apps at launch include: Shopify (ecommerce), Typeform (surveys), DropInBlog (content and search engine optimization).
- Tracking and reporting – analytics that will empower course creators to understand their students’ behaviors, preferences and needs. Apps at launch include: Segment, Google Analytics, Mixpanel (data collection and analysis).
- Automation – email automation tools to simplify backend operations and customer communication. Apps at launch include: ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, ConvertKit (email automation).
Thinkific is incentivizing early developer partners by offering them 100% of the revenue earned through the sale of their apps for the first six months. After that period, the Company will offer one of the industry’s most generous revenue share programs, paying developers 85% of revenue earned through the sale of their apps.
*USD $350 billion online education market quoted from the 2019 report published on Research and Markets titled, Online Education Market & Global Forecast, by End User, Learning Mode (Self-Paced, Instructor Led), Technology, Country, Company.
About Thinkific
Thinkific [TSX:THNC] makes it simple for entrepreneurs and established businesses of any size to scale and generate revenue by teaching what they know. Our platform gives businesses everything they need to build, market, and sell online courses and other learning products, and to run their business seamlessly under their own brand, on their own site. In 2020 alone, Thinkific’s 50,000 active course creators earned more than $275M USD in direct course sales while teaching tens of millions of students. Thinkific is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with a distributed and growing team.
For more information, please visit www.thinkific.com/app-store.
This news release includes forward-looking statements and forward–looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. Often, but not always, forward–looking information can be identified by the use of words such as “plans”, “is expected”, “expects”, “scheduled”, “intends”, “contemplates”, “anticipates”, “believes”, “proposes” or variations (including negative and grammatical variations) of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results “may”, “could”, “would”, “might” or “will” be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements in this news release include statements regarding the Company’s plans related to the Thinkific App Store, the expected benefits of the Thinkific App Store, the apps to be included in the Thinkific App Store and the benefits of such apps, the Company’s investment in the developer community, the Company’s expectations regarding revenue sharing programs with developers, the growth of online education and our ability to scale our platform to accommodate an increase in course creators. Such statements and information are based on the current expectations of Thinkific’s management, and are based on assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties. Although Thinkific’s management believes that the assumptions underlying these statements and information are reasonable, they may prove to be incorrect. The forward–looking events and circumstances discussed in this news release may not occur by certain dates or at all and could differ materially as a result of known and unknown risk factors and uncertainties affecting Thinkific, including risks related to the performance of the Thinkific App Store, the use of the Thinkific App Store by course creators, the utility of the apps included in the Thinkific App Store and the risk factors set forth in Thinkific’s prospectus under the heading “Risk Factors”. Although Thinkific has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward–looking statements and information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. No forward–looking statement or information can be guaranteed. Except as required by applicable securities laws, forward–looking statements and information speak only as of the date on which they are made and Thinkific undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward–looking statement or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
SOURCE Thinkific Labs Inc.
