So-Young Kang is a serial entrepreneur who is committed to increasing human flourishing. She is the creator of Gnowbe, a market-leading micro learning creator tool that is changing the way people teach and learn. Gnowbe democratizes content creation by empowering creators to design, build, and share participatory, social multimedia content.
Below are highlights of the interview:
Describe your background and what did you do before founding Gnowbe?
After graduating from Harvard Business School, I worked for McKinsey as a strategy consultant and performance transformation expert. In late 2008, I had a transformational experience that triggered me to start my first company—Awaken Group, a human-centered transformation design firm that was designed to help organizations lead from the inside out. It’s a multidisciplinary company that integrates strategy, leadership, human-centered design, and technology to better align strategy to people to purpose.
Along the way, I published my first book called “Inside Out,” got selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, was a speaker at Davos, and continue to publish for the World Economic Forum. I regularly speak globally at conferences like the Drucker Forum, 2x TEDx and publish on the future of education, transformation, leadership, and entrepreneurship, especially as an Asian-American female founder. Featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, TED, Davos, etc. [more details: https://www.so-youngkang.com/]
After training, coaching, and consulting thousands of people around the world, we realized the need to digitize and scale our engagements. We wanted to design experiential, interactive experiences in a more scalable way. We couldn’t find tools to support this other than having a mismatch of tools like PowerPoint, polls, feedback forms, social media, what’s app groups, etc. to try to mirror the in-person experiential workshops we were running and it was still too messy. So we created Gnowbe to scale this human engagement and experience and spun it out of Awaken Group.
Tell us more about Gnowbe.
Gnowbe positively impacts lives through better learning experiences. Current authoring and creator tools are currently designed for passive sharing of content (e.g., videos, text with some quiz questions), which is expensive and time-consuming to create. Gnowbe is the only authoring solution designed to transform content into shared experiences.
Simply put, Gnowbe enables anyone to create awesome shared experiences (like ‘Canva for Learning Experiences’).
Gnowbe empowers a growing number of creators globally, who include trainers, teachers, instructional designers, publishers, academic institutions, coaches, event organizers, non-profits, global thought leaders, etc.
What is Gnowbe?
Gnowbe is a super easy-to-use authoring tool that empowers creators to design, digitize and scale shared learning experiences (like ‘Canva for Learning Experiences’).
Gnowbe’s award-winning “one-touch authoring” system features group boards for shared learning and engagement, scheduled session deployment, rapid curation accessing multimedia options, gamification, offline access, and push notifications. Gnowbe makes learning fun, engaging, and effective, enabling understanding, retention, and application. It’s powered by robust analytics, a CRM system, and an e-commerce engine to manage learners.
Creators most commonly create:
– New learning experiences (blended, online)
– Digital workbooks
– E-learning courses
– Coaching and feedback programs
– Sales and product playbooks
– Onboarding experiences for remote teams
– Safety, health and wellness equipping
– Certification prep
Team engagement, fun & games
Daily habit forming programs
With a seamless desktop and mobile experience and support for over 100 languages, Gnowbe empowers creators anytime, anywhere.
Who is your target audience? How do you create services that align with what they’re looking for?
Our target is creators—anyone who creates content to be shared with groups of people. This includes trainers, teachers, coaches, speakers, leaders, and thought leaders.
Anyone who uses PowerPoint to connect with their audiences but wants to do it in more engaging, trackable, and scalable ways could improve their content for greater impact.
Gnowbe’s one-touch authoring system and creator tools make it so easy that anyone can create with no code and very little training. Anyone can look like a superstar instructional designer with a few clicks.
What are the major changes happen in client behavior and market operation since pandemic?
Clients realize the need for human connection and digitization. Digital engagement and learning are not going away. They need to find ways to do this in more engaging ways.
It has increased the awareness and demand for Gnowbe as a humanizing technology that is intentionally designed to connect people together.
What gets you up in the morning? What are your responsibilities as the CEO of the company?
Purpose and the opportunity to impact millions of creators and really transform how we design and deliver great content. Education is a $8 trillion industry, corporate learning is a $380 billion industry. However, the bulk of the spend is on content asset creation and on administration systems.
The most important player in this market is the person who delivers the content—the creator.
I get up every day thinking about how to best serve creators to empower each with the best, easiest to use, and most effective tools to design amazing learning experiences.
My role as CEO is to serve my team and help them remove blockages and solve issues. It’s also about setting the vision and direction for the company and creating the space for our team, partners, and ecosystem to be successful.
Kindly describe how you will specifically know what success looks like for you.
When millions of creators are empowered to impact the lives of their communities, there is a network effect of impact on their audiences. Our team is inspired and motivated to create great products and help our creators succeed.
What advice would you give to the next generation of female leaders?
Be your true self. There is power in both the feminine and masculine. It’s OK to be fully female AND an impactful leader. “Believe it and own it.”
Have grace for yourself, as no one is perfect. We are not perfect, but always improving. Leadership can be lonely. Surround yourself with mentors and people-both men and women-who can support you and partner with you on your journey.
What are your future plans to sustain your and the company’s success?
Our #1 priority now is to raise awareness for creators of what they can create with Gnowbe.
We launched a $10 million scholarship to certify creators in microlearning instructional design (MID) as a way to equip them with the skills to design more interactive, effective learning experiences.
We are actively recruiting ambassadors to promote and train others on how to utilize content globally.
Website: www.gnowbe.com
