Perhaps he’s inspired by the Latin phrase Scientia potentia est: I’m sure you’re all familiar with it. It reads “knowledge is power”, and in this case Griffel has used his central philosophy to offer his students power over their very futures. If you take a One Month class Griffel doesn’t see you as only another number passing through the system. Rather, he cares if you finish or not because that means you’ve been able to use One Month to change your life for the better. To say it another way, you’ve used the power of knowledge to alter your future one way or another. That’s an incredibly attractive quality, which is exactly why a cohort of investors announced today that they’ll fund One Month with $1.9 million. Idea Bulb Ventures – a former investor in One Month, Arena Ventures, and Cornerstone OnDemand led the round. The new bout of funding will go directly to hire new teachers, building the platform further, and growing enterprise sales with a new ‘One Month for Teams’ offering. They’ve also changed to a subscription based payment model recently in order to extend educational opportunity to more students. It’s helped them bring in 1,000 new students, raising the total number of lives impact to 2,500. Rightly so, Griffel are thrilled by their traction and as such have set their sights even higher as they push forward. To that end they’ll look to sustain their growth by rolling out several new courses divided by three major schools: Technology, Design, and Business. Additionally they’ll open up new course offerings for Javascript, Sales, and UX. The worry with growth like this is that the company will lose touch with their roots, but Griffel assures me that One Month will stay committed to defeating the biggest challenges faced by online education. Low completion and engagement rates, ineffective programs, and limited course offerings are a thing of the past – One Month wants you to succeed. Take the reins because life is waiting for your command. Image Credit: geograph / Jonathan Billinger
