Meet Darren Winterford, founder of EdApp
Before starting EdApp, Darren Winterford spent years creating mobile apps for larger organisations. He was frustrated that most workplaces were still using PDFs and PowerPoint to train their employees despite most people being accustomed to smartphones and apps. Quality workplace training was only available to the bigger players with access to budget, time and resources. Darren wanted to revolutionise that, so he founded EdApp.
EdApp by SafetyCulture is changing the way the world learns at work. Because they believe everyone should have access to top-notch learning and training on the job, no matter what the position, or location.
There’s always a lightbulb moment before the beginning of a new venture. What was that moment for you?
EdApp was born when we realised how fundamentally broken workplace learning is. In the late 2000s, I founded a digital agency that built apps for larger organisations. We were able to see the software needs of many businesses in a broader way, and it quickly became obvious that workplace training is not equal. That didn’t sit right with me.
So, in 2017 we pivoted to focus solely on building EdApp. Today, we support 50,000+ lessons per day on our platform, with users in 90+ countries.
What’s the most common problem your customers approach you with?
In the e-learning space, the three biggest barriers are cost, time, and lack of organisational training.
Traditional learning management systems (LMS) can cost upwards of $4,000 a year. And that’s not including additional features like reporting, translation, or authoring tools. This often means that necessary workplace learning is only available to those who can afford it. On top of this constraint, HR often wears many hats in small-to-medium organisations. This leaves little time to create training when they’re busy hiring across the business and managing their own teams. When they’re already at capacity, they don’t have the time to dedicate weeks or months to think up a concept, then plan, create, revise, and deliver an end-to-end training experience for internal and external teams.
That’s why at EdApp, our biggest focus is how we can help those who are passionate about educating, training deliver the experience but doesn’t add to their to-do list and is cost-effective.
How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?
Really I think the two biggest things that set us apart is 1. Our freemium model and 2. The fact that we offer help with content creation - without the big price tags.
We have a saying at EdApp that we’re free forever for whoever needs us to be. That’s because we want organisations of any size to be able to use our product, without restricting our features in a way that would make it impossible to use without moving onto a paid plan. This means that anyone can get real value from our products, particularly NGOs and small advocacy groups.
YouthhubAfrica, a frontline youth advocacy organisation based in Nigeria, uses EdApp to empower youth across the continent to fight against female genital mutilation (FGM). In less than a week, YouthhubAfrica successfully created and launched the life-saving training in English and French to over 1,375+ users in 11 countries, with 68 percent of users actively taking the course.
With nearly two thirds of the world’s population owning a mobile device, EdApp removes the upfront cost of investing in a platform and technology to support important initiatives like this. And learners can even access these courses off-line to accommodate internet restrictions.
The second is that we have a team of designers helping organisations convert their content into bite-sized lessons. When working in small-to-medium businesses, you don’t have the luxury of dedicated learning and development teams. You get really passionate one-man/woman bands who are trying to rally everyone else, want to create great training but are also battling with a million and one things on their to-do list. As a start up, it’s a feeling we know all too well!
Our content creation bundles means that these businesses can deliver the same quality training as the big name players without adding to their to-do list. They hand their resources over to us and we turn their PDFs, PPTs into interactive gamified learning experiences.
What's the single most important decision you made that contributed to your business?
One of the most important decisions I made was less of a decision and more of a connection. I was lucky enough to meet Luke Anear, the CEO and founder of Safety Culture in 2017. I saw a lot of commonalities between our two businesses, including how he and I operated as people. Since then, he has been a fantastic mentor to help expand the business over the last 4 years.
I constantly learn from the way Luke leads – and that’s by looking further into the future than anyone else, while still driving ongoing business growth. We’ve developed a fantastic relationship over the years which led to SafetyCulture contributing to our early funding rounds and led to the full acquisition of the business in 2020. Luke is a big believer in letting people do what they do best – something that I also believe in the people who work at EdApp – and it’s allowed us to focus on growing our business sustainably without needing to bow down to our biggest customers.
What plans do you have for EdApp over the next two years?
We’re on a mission to change the way the world learns at work. To get there, we’re making training more available to everybody on the planet. Over the next two years, we will be focusing on bringing in more people to help us reach this goal and finding new ways to break the barriers of workplace learning. For me, helping people is at the heart of our business.
Hiring the right team is vital in any business. What are your top three tips for hiring and developing engineering talent?
Focus on the person, not their experience. You could have someone straight out of university and they’re just as good if not better than someone with 10 years experience.
Don’t be afraid to think out of the box when it comes to hiring processes. Everyone is looking for engineers from the big tech players and smaller companies. How do you set yourself apart?
When it comes to developing talent, EdAppers have a lot of ownership, autonomy, and the ability to influence what they do and the career path they take. And it's not always linear. We’ve had growth specialists turned product managers and vice versa. We operate a really flat structure and trust our team that they know what’s best. and I think that’s really important.
How important is company culture and what is your top tip to get it right?
Company culture is essential to building a team that will get you to your goals. We believe in hiring the right people, not the right skill set.
The role builds around the person, not the other way around. I also think if the last two years have taught us anything, it's that people want flexibility. Creating a culture that gives people not only flexibility in their day to day work but also opportunity to take ownership of the direction of their role and location of where they work is important. Lots of our employees have started in one location or in one team and then have moved to a new location or across to a different team.
What are your thoughts on failure?
Failure is a stepping stone on the way to success. You’ve got to fail to understand what doesn’t work. Which is just as crucial as understanding what does work. What’s most important is the steps you take after you fail. If you learn from the failure and think ‘okay that didn’t work but what did we learn from it and what did we learn about our customers’ you can start to steer yourself towards a solution that works - progress is more important than perfection. I also think that if you keep the customer in mind with every decision that you make, you won’t miss the mark.
What routines have you got in place to ensure that you don’t ignore your mental health?
Exercise is probably the most important thing, if not the most important thing I do for my mental health. The day always starts with some exercise. I’m so lucky to live in a part of the world where I can enjoy a bike, swim or run in the morning with some amazing views.
It’s also something I always encourage among our team members as well. We’re always getting involved in events in and around office locations. A bunch of us recently competed in the Cole Classic in Manly and we have a Slack channel dedicated to EdAppers doing half marathons. We’re a very inclusive bunch as well - everyone is encouraged to have a go!
Any new product launches we should know about?
We’ve recently made invite links and downloadable QR codes automatically generated. So organisations can quickly share access to their course or course collection from their preferred communication channels, such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, SMS text, or a print-out.
Releasing customised certificates so now organisations can brand them like they’re theirs and meet their compliance needs.
Our biggest release happening later this month is Brain Boost - a personalised spaced repetition feature that helps to make sure learners are clued in on all those important need-to-knows through refresher quizzes.
What advice would you give to early-stage founders wanting to harness the power of technology to create a positive impact?
Don’t keep your ideas and your growth ambitions to yourself. I think people get scared that people are going to steal their idea. A lot of other innovators I speak to keep their cards close to their chest. But to really grow your business, you need to get comfortable with asking for help or asking others to join you on the journey. One of the reasons that we see so much great innovation coming out of California is that they share openly and they aren’t afraid to ask for help.
Over the last 18 months, We’ve noticed this trend of openness happening with our customers. They’ve been sharing their content via our course library so other organisations and learners can access it. We can only move forward if we share and increase the accessibility of knowledge with others. I’m incredibly proud to see the platform being used in this way.
