Stoa is a 21st century business education which is mobile-first. People want a gateway to prosperity, and that is business education. Everyone has an aspiration to setup their own business at some point of time.

## Aditya background

- Working in Bangalore back in 2010. Bishop Cotton has 400 seats and 3000 applications with parents standing outside waiting for their students to get in. Joined another company in Pune. IIM Shillong, 2 years, get to trek around North East. Joined another worked for a year, cracked and joined a company. 
- Roundglass, social emotional well being curriculum. 

Earlier version of Stoa—Questo.

## Raj background

- Put things together, pick on a mission, and get people to align themselves to take on a mission. Realised the crypto boom and being a BITSian, some batchmate or the other. 

- Why dont I mix education with running a big business. Also set up an alternative learning space, realized that he is not so comfortable in the offline, and taken by storm by how you can deliver education on the internet.

[11:04](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=664s) - And in late 2018, two years into journey, get onto Twitter and connect with people. Bumped into lambda school, and the financing model of education in terms of income share agreements. Top 10% who do not make into IIT, BITS? 

[12:46](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=766s) - Early 2019, took on a bigger batch, and help people break into product and tech business ecosystems. Solving a real problem which could be monetized.

[13:59](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=839s) - Became a part of online learning communities. Found out how someone looked at education, and how we were all aligned towards these factors.

[15:57](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=957s) - We can join together, that we have complementary strengths that we can put into good use. Raj and Aditya have not personally met each other. They have done their interviews at CCD and completed them. Everyone in the team is having a background in education.


## Starting point

[18:48](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=1128s) - They met through an online learning community of Transcend Network

- Investigating — Who are the geeks, mobs, evaporative cooling effect etc.

- Every new member added to the community actually lowers the quality of the community,

[20:22](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=1222s) -  Channels like Economics Explained, to the way he is putting content and having a Patreon which doesn't make as much money out of them.

[21:04](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=1264s) - Questo initially started with Youtube creators, and they wanted to create their learning communities. In the process, doing one program takes a lot of hard work. And it cannot be done for multiple things.

## Viable alternative to an MBA program

[25:06](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=1506s) - It's a proof of their intellectual ability, years for the MBA colleges to get that reputation.  What is the market?

[26:43](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=1603s) -  There is a spectrum of people who will benefit from this. Spectrum of business of business education is broken. 10,000 out of 2.5 make more than 10 lacs.

[28:25](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=1705s) -  Doing an MBA is a core aspiration for various aspirations. Tons of roles without business aspirations. Sales, stuck in sales because they are not able to communicate that well.

[29:22](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=1762s) - Why do people want to get in business education? Signalling as a service. Why MBA? Most people prepare and answer the question. It's a mix of confusion and aspiration. If you want to pursue an education within India, it's an education for extended 2 years, and it comes with aspirations.

[31:50](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=1910s) -  CAT does filtering very well. It doesn't do filtering, but does curation. Some people do feel underconfident when the opposite person is from a business college.

[33:12](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=1992s) -  Network, Signal and Learning and Language.

### To speak the founder's language. The startup generalist.

[37:33](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=2253s) - Two more years for interesting smart people to figure their life out.

[38:46](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=2326s) - Someone who leads a finance companies, MBA etc. Preparing for CAT, company you get in, another 2-4 years to pay back the loan. 

- MBA is a wild animal.

## Business education for everybody

[42:55](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=2575s) -  Running workshops on a standalone basis. Lot of times, explicitly told to people, this is business team, you wouldn't get it. When the business discussions are happening, they realised that they wanted to have a voice in these conversations. They kind of understood this persona.

[44:13](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=2653s) - 100s of naming suggestions and brand and logo to finally arriving at the identity. This is a segment of adult education. Selling to people who are actually go through an experience.

[47:03](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=2823s) -  The vibe is pretty outdated. We wanted to have a fresh voice, and reach out to young folks in their own language.

[49:00](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=2940s) - If you have to overcome an initial psyche, like IIPM etc. This is what we have to overcome. Through Stoa, branding psychology.

[53:36](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=3216s) -  Company wants to become a content-first company. Business education where they get the content for free. And then you join the Stoa for experience. Start building an audience for the offering. Captive audience who is excited for what you are doing.

[55:05](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=3305s) -  People go from being outside Stoa to inside Stoa. Raj is looking into branding and marketing.

## How to grow your Twitter

- Be fucking interesting and helpful.

[01:01:57](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=3717s) - To not turn anyone around. Have a conversation with a 1:1, creating content etc. Twitter as a content creation platform, you can help people at scale.

Putting out few sharp tweets on what they could do in their careers to learn more, can really help people.

[01:03:23](https://youtu.be/voZORK7OkoY&t=3803s) - you have to be doing things which others are finding too risky to take. 

### People like to watch a good show. They love living vicariously through other people's adventures.



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