Courstore is a startup that helps experts launch online courses and earn money from them.

Rauan Syzdykov, 37 years old, city — Astana, founder and CEO of Courstore, @rauan.appasuly, @courstore

How It All Started

The EdTech sector became close to me in 2007, when I began my career in education. At first, I taught in schools, then at universities such as KBTU and KazNTU. Eventually, I took on the role of Chief Digital Transformation Officer at Astana IT University. I also conducted numerous seminars and trained employees in PM and Scrum methodologies. In parallel, I freelanced on IT projects and startups in positions such as UX/UI designer, PHP developer, and project manager. Later, I worked as CEO in several companies. Throughout all this time, I had a dream to develop a marketplace for online courses.

In 2020, we decided to create a platform similar to Udemy for the CIS countries. Over two years, we realized that the marketplace model did not work in our region. After a series of CustDev research studies, in 2022, we pivoted to creating an online course platform, an analog of GetCourse with its own features. This became a new beginning: we opened another company, changed our positioning, and made our first sales.

After the pivot, only my partner Ruslan — the CTO — and I remained in the project. The project developed slowly but surely. I handled sales, pitching, and strategy, while Ruslan focused on developing functionality. We learned to identify key features for clients through CustDev, which significantly accelerated our growth. Then, I began forming a sales department and expanding the development team.

Target Audience

Our clients are info-business owners, experts, teachers, and educational centers. We offer a service with a convenient course builder and automated sales thanks to ready-made integrations with Kaspi payments and other acquiring systems.

Currently, we are the only educational platform integrated with Kaspi. We have more than 135 paying clients, 574 courses, and 24,000 enrolled students.

Acceleration Programs

We went through several acceleration programs, which helped us launch sales and improve our positioning. After participating in programs from MOST and Scalerator from Astana Hub, we began entering the Uzbek market.

Challenges

2023 was particularly difficult for us, both financially and emotionally. Numerous meetings with investors yielded no results. Thanks to faith and effort, we surpassed the monthly sales threshold of $10,000. Plans to enter the Uzbek market attracted investor attention and secured a commitment of $55,000 out of the planned $75,000. We are confident that we will soon attract the remaining $20,000 and complete the fundraising round.

I advise aspiring startup founders to first develop an MVP and primarily test the viability of the business model. It is necessary to set aside ego and recognize that there is always something to learn. Persistence, faith, patience, and timely work on mistakes will inevitably lead to results.

Achievements

In 2023, we achieved impressive results: the turnover of experts on the platform amounted to $1.2 million with the sale of 43,327 courses. The client churn rate was only 5%. The platform featured more than 103 schools and experts offering more than 424 courses and 9,245 lessons. Our revenue last year grew eightfold, reflecting client trust and satisfaction. 16,033 students completed training, and we reached 20,297 MAU.

Plans

In May, we plan to enter the Uzbek market, and in the summer, we aim to attract the next round of investment for further expansion into Southeast Asian markets and strengthening our brand in Kazakhstan.