Innovating Talent Upskilling: The Birth of Talstack

Two Visionaries Come Together

In the burgeoning tech space in Africa, Seni Sulyman and Kayode Oyewole have established themselves as stalwarts. The duo have recently collaborated to launch a novel B2B SaaS learning platform, Talstack, leveraging their cumulative wealth of experience garnered at global tech organizations such as Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Bellhop, Konga, and Andela.

Talstack’s Genesis

Their paths converged when Kola Aina, founder of Ventures Platform, noticed the similarity in their ideas around upskilling talent. A series of discussions over 3/4 months led them to realize the gravity and immediacy of the challenge and the significant opportunity it presented. They responded to this need by creating Talstack, a platform designed to provide infrastructure for the growth and development of talent.

Making Headway with Talstack

Talstack started off strong, securing an impressive $850,000 in pre-seed funding led by Ventures Platform. The initial target of $650,000 was exceeded due to robust investor demand, a testament to the value they saw in a platform offering bite-size, context-rich learning from professionals with firsthand experience in Africa.

Unearthing a Major Pain Point

Sulyman, during his tenure as the VP of global operations at Andela, was faced with the challenge of effectively upskilling a rapidly growing team. Traditional methods such as mentorship and outsourcing proved inefficient. In parallel, Oyewole, with his experience at Ventures Platform and MAX.ng, observed a pressing issue: many companies lacked teams with the necessary quality of talent to deliver high returns on investment.

Both Sulyman and Oyewole independently tried solving this problem through e-learning platforms like Coursera and Udacity. However, the complexity and lack of relatability in these courses often led to employees not completing them.

A Novel Approach to Upskilling

Identifying a shared problem and the ineffectiveness of existing solutions, Sulyman and Oyewole embarked on creating a unique learning platform that deviates from traditional lecture-style teaching.

Addressing the issue of dwindling attention spans, they introduced bite-sized, five-minute courses. By providing content that’s relatable and easily understandable, with real-world examples and nuances, Talstack ensures better comprehension. To make the learning actionable, they provide a checklist to implement the learnings.

Enlisting Real-world Experts

Talstack further emphasizes the authenticity of its learning experience by engaging professionals with substantial experience in the relevant field to create content. This ensures learners benefit from the firsthand experience of experts who have achieved success in their respective fields.

How Talstack Operates

Positioning itself as a B2B entity, Talstack offers learning content to companies, allowing employees to choose what they want to learn. To ensure a personalized learning journey, they also provide pre-assessment tests to employees.

Talstack selects experts who can deliver content exclusively for their platform. They assist these experts internally to build the courses. Companies pay a subscription fee to access this expert-curated content, a part of which is paid to the contributing experts.

In summary, the unique approach of Talstack in upskilling talent is a promising solution in the burgeoning African tech ecosystem. With its innovative learning techniques and expert-led content, it’s poised to fill the gap in quality talent development.

Company website:
https://www.talstack.com/

Founders on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/senisulyman/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayodeoyewole/

Image Source: Talstack