Marc Havercroft steps down as Go1 president, comes on as exec advisor

More than a year after becoming president of Logan-based edtech Go1, Marc Havercroft has announced he will be stepping down from the role in order to pursue new opportunities.

Prior to taking the job, Havercroft spent three years as global chief customer officer of human resources analytics platform SAP SuccessFactors – a company owned by German multinational SAP, which has a market capitalisation of EUR$148 billion (AUD $241 billion).

Upon joining Go1, he was tasked with helping the unicorn capitalise on growing international demand for digital learning solutions from SME, enterprise and government organisations.

Havercroft, who will remain involved in Go1 as an executive advisor, told Business News Australia he was looking forward to getting some rest before taking on a new challenge.

“The journey has been exciting, exhausting and everything in between. It's been fascinating to work with the technology-challenging industry coming out of Australia,” Havercroft said.

“I've done a lot of global roles based out of Australia and hopefully it’s showing people that it can be done, and the investment community [that] there's a good reason to invest in some smart ideas in Australia.”

Valued at more than $2 billion, Go1’s disruptive learning aggregation solutions operate as an education marketplace, likened to Netflix but for courses. The platform offers employees professional development, wellbeing, and compliance training.

During his time as president and chief commercial officer (CCO), Havercroft helped the company scale in global markets like the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ).

“All three regions are very exciting regions, but what I learned is that they're all very different to enter. The US has been good from a perspective of being able to bring in some talent that I knew very well to help us get into the enterprise market,” Havercroft said.

“I also think the business really needed to open up itself to listen to their customers, and particularly what the market wants. One of the challenges in startup technologies is that they get carried away with technological functionality.

“One thing I learned at SAP was that you start with the customer in the marketplace first because if nobody's buying it, it's worth nothing. Going into the US really helped the board understand that there is beauty in being a simple aggregator and landing that business model well in a big market will allow you to scale and grow.”

Go1 CEO Andrew Barnes, who co-founded the company alongside Chris Eigeland, Vu Tran and Chris Hood, added that Havercroft played a big part in the company’s growth journey since coming on board.

“We probably had about $50 million in revenue when Marc joined and we’re closing out this financial year north of $250 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). It's been quite a scaling journey. That was the piece of the puzzle that we're looking for - someone with the enterprise experience to help us do that," Barnes said.

“It was a very unique and special role - now that we've done that, it’d be big shoes to fill. We're not doing a search for a new global president at this point in time.”

When asked about the company’s future plans, Barnes was optimistic the edtech could continue capitalising on the demand for digital learning solutions, having recently acquired mobile learning app Blinkistfor an undisclosed price.

It also follows the company’s acquisition of UK ed-tech partner Anders Pink. Announced earlier this year, that deal saw Go1 take control of the company in order to develop intelligent, automated recommendations for learning content.

In 2022, the edtech snapped up Paris-based Coorpacademy, a learning experience platform and content library in Europe with major global customers including Societe Generale, Schneider Electric, BNP Paribas, Nestlé and L'Oréal.

“We see such a massive market opportunity in front of us. We've gone through a lot of growth over the last couple of years, which has been exciting. But the thing that gets me even more excited is it's still the beginning - there's so much more to be done,” Barnes said.

“We now reach close to 40 million learners globally, where someone completes a course on Go1 every second of every day 24/7.

“As we think about the future of the work environment, people will need to constantly reskill and upskill and that's a proposition that we're excited about.”