This YouTube interview (uploaded Feb 26, 2025) features TJ Walker speaking with Bhav Chahal, founder of GoSkills. Key points in this chunk: GoSkills launched in 2013 after Bhav noticed strong demand for online courses while at Groupon in Sydney; the platform focuses on technology and business skills rather than an enormous catalog; the company is investing in AI learning assistants and personalization and is starting with tech courses as a proof of concept; the speakers discuss how changing search (less dominance by Google) and short-form/personalized experiences may reshape online learning.
Questions this video answers
2013.
February 26, 2025.
Chapters
And you don't know what you don't know until you see someone else's spreadsheet and you see pivot tables and macros and all sorts of things. And then you realize, oh, okay, I actually don't know too much about this.
You've specialized more. You're not trying to have 100,000 courses. Tell us about your strategy and how you're different from others in the marketplace.
Yeah, so we do have a strong technology focus and business skills focus.
Is the fact that Google isn't as dominant changing what you're doing?
That's a really great question and it's literally what we're thinking about right now. You know what the leaders in the space are saying, but I don't have the answer yet. It's this short form, you know, in 20 years time, unless, well, it's not going to be in the same form. It's not going to be, you know, the blue links and links to websites. It'll be very contextual, it'll be personalized. And so we need to figure that one out. Do you have any thoughts, tj?
I'm grappling with this every single day. I mean the biggest thing I work on is how can I, how can I enhance my courses to make them really stand out?
We are, we are investing in AI learning assistants and our aim is to, is to get to where you are different personalities that suit your learning style.
Well, have I got a course for you. If you want everyone at Go Skills to get up on this and you're going to be able to get it at absolutely no charge. I personally find text chatbots very uninteresting. I mean my bank had that a decade ago. Doesn't seem very high tech or interactive. And video based online learning is about seeing a real person.
The reason we're starting with the tech space is because it's just more of a proof of concept.
The world of online training. You've heard of Udemy, you've heard of Coursera. There are all these big gigantic platforms. LinkedIn learning. Well, believe it or not, there are a number of other online training platforms that are wildly successful, that have millions of students that have been around a long time you might not have heard of today. I'm very happy to have with us the founder of one of those websites, Bob Chahal has started Go Skills. She did it on her own bootstrapped. She didn't go out and raise $100 billion like some did. She built it with her own hands and with her team. We're very excited to have you. Bob, thanks for joining us today.
Hi, thank you for having me.
I'm very excited and full disclosure, I've been very fortunate and happy to be a part of the go skills community. Now I just looked at my record. It's been nine years since my first course got on there and happy to be a part of it. But tell us about your journey. Now you have a background in marketing, you worked with Groupon and certainly that's well known to American audiences, audiences around the world. How did you first come across the idea of creating online learning? Because you were one of the early ones way back a decade ago. More than a decade ago.
Yeah. Yeah. So we started in 2013. We actually started because I was working at Groupon in Sydney, Australia and my role there was to analyze the top selling deals in Australia and the top selling product category was online courses.
