There is a reason so many great minds in science and technology swear by the age-old Latin maxim “Docendo discimus”. Attributed to the Roman philosopher Seneca, it means “we learn by teaching”, and is an affirmation of the idea that the best way to grow knowledge and make it systematic is to teach others what you have learned yourself.
It was this premise that led a young and ambitious finance specialist from Sofia to embark on a mission to design the best possible online professional skills courses. In 2012, fresh out of Bocconi University and with a high-flying career start as a finance officer at a top global consultancy firm, Nedko Krastev created and published his first financial analysis course online. Over the next two years, he released several more highly-acclaimed courses on finance topics on different online learning platforms, and growing a following among the followers and takers of the courses, he decided it was time to dedicate himself fully to the mission of teaching.
In 2014, Nedko left his corporate finance job, and started crafting and publishing finance skill courses as a full-time pursuit, naming his new company 365 Careers. In 2016, he hired his first team member, and by 2017, the company had grown to four employees, and launched its first course materials in a new field, data science. As the growth of courses and students continued, Nedko and his team started thinking of developing their own, proprietary platform, where they could offer entire multi-level courses, with their own designed methodology and functionalities. Having attained close to 3 million users on one of the leading global learning platforms, 365 Careers was ready to take ownership of its user base and build out its own tech.
And so in 2020, the team spun out a new business for its proprietary product, calling it 365 Company, and launched its own courses in the finance and data science and AI fields. “The timing couldn’t have been better”, say Nedko and 365 Company COO Ivan Kitov, as we tour the company’s office on Sofia’s Cherni Vrah boulevard, right in the heart of Sofia’s booming new tech district across from Paradise Center. “People were locked down at home at the start of the pandemic, and looking for ways to learn and grow as an alternative to working remotely and watching movies. We couldn’t have been luckier strategically”.
Today, 365 Company is a dynamically growing global e-learning business. Since the company’s launch in 2020, its courses have attracted hundreds of thousands of paid users on the company’s own platform, and Nedko and Ivan are proud of the usage statistics, which at 2 million minutes of daily viewership rank among the highest in the industry when fractioned with the total number of users. The company now employs 30 people, spread across its offices in Sofia and Kazanlak, and retains over 50 top-level experts in its two core industry focus fields, which include ranking specialists from leading global names in tech, finance, and Fortune 500 corporations.
With the investment we made with Vitosha in late 2023, 365 Company has big plans. “This year we’re pivoting the model from one-off courses to subscriptions”, says Ivan. “We already have over 8,000 beta subscribers with whom we’re testing the model, and we see a huge surge in value and retention with these users. As we’re moving towards the launch of our all-new subscription platform in summer of this year, we also expect the numbers of courses to grow by at least 50% towards the end of 2024, while we invest heavily in attracting additional top instructor talent for designing new programming and materials”.
“This new phase for 365 Company will see us focus on building out the gamification and AI functionality in our subscription-based learning system, with which we want to grow into a global player”, adds Nedko. And he concludes: “Our fundamental mission is to democratize access to knowledge and skills, and empower millions of people to become top-level professionals in the most dynamically developing skill fields of our generation”.