Marta Forero, Ubits | Building an MVP and Selling B2B, and Lessons from Online Education [Ep. 14]

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As the guest of this episode, we have Marta Forero, COO and cofounder of Ubits. Ubits is the leading online corporate education platform in Spanish-speaking Latin America. In this conversation, we go in depth on how Marta thinks about creating a Minimum Viable Product or MVP and making the first sales in a B2B market.

Today, Ubits has companies such as Falabella, Sura, and Alsea as customers. In addition, to date, it has raised more than 7 million dollars from investors such as Owl Ventures, Y Combinator, and Stanford University.

What You Can Learn Today

  • Building an MVP in B2B
  • Sales process in B2B
  • Insights on online education

If you like the podcast, the easiest way to help us is by leaving a review with ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 1 minute and helps us convince the hardest guests to land, such as David Vélez, CEO and founder of Nubank, whom we would love to interview.

Origin of Ubits (and How to Build an MVP for B2B)

  • [2:05] - How did Marta arrive at the world of startups?
    • Being independent, creating a company, and lessons from accelerators
  • [4:00] - What is Ubits and what problem does it solve within Edtech?
    • Start and evolution of Ubits
    • Product iterations
    • Ubits today as an online corporate education platform
  • [9:40] - What was the process of building the Ubits MVP like?
    • Focus on product
    • First corporate users
    • Creation of a corporate training platform in Excel
    • Bootstrapped MVP
    • Next versions of the MVP
  • [13:05] - From creating custom programs to being a corporate education platform
  • [15:40] - How to create an MVP in a B2B company
    • Trust in the quality
    • More advanced platforms as competition
    • Support from the first B2B customers in the growth of Ubits
    • Seeking product-market fit
  • [18:43] - Lessons from creating an MVP for B2B
    • Listening to the market and creating a scalable product, not a customized one
    • Taking risks on business models and learning from foreign competitors

B2B Sales Process

  • [22:20] - How did they get the first B2B sales at Ubits?
    • Company-by-company sales
    • Focus on Customer Success
    • Repurchase by customers with initially small deals
    • Considering company trends in order to plan sales
    • Seniority and training of the salespeople
  • [25:34] - How did the pandemic impact the corporate education market and, in particular, how did it affect Ubits?
    • 3x growth in study time
    • Analysis of students’ behavior and course choice
    • Validation that online education works
    • Importance of servers in order to offer a technology platform
  • [30:13] - Cross-selling of courses between areas and bottom-up SaaS
    • Discoveries and an increase in internal adoption of the platform

The Future of Higher Education

  • [33:14] - Experience working at a virtual university
    • Reality of education
    • Professionalizing people with years of experience
    • Creation of online education platforms
  • [35:49] - Lessons about online education applied to Ubits
    • Focus on content versus creating a platform from scratch
    • Need to define a methodology and what makes Ubits unique
    • Support from experts and hands-on experience
    • Impact of the product on users
  • [40:50] - Future of higher education in Latin America for non-technical professions such as sales and operations
    • Uncertainty and obstacles in higher education
    • Opportunity in executive education
    • Focus on careers of the future
  • [43:17] - Verticals/trends in which Marta would like to see more entrepreneurs
    • Secondary education
    • Artificial intelligence in education
    • Careers that do not yet exist
    • Low-cost education
    • Methodology according to how students learn

Tweet Round

  • [46:34] -
    • Recommended books: Radical Candor, by Kim Scott
    • Changes in the Latin American startup ecosystem: a more collaborative culture and a better perception of startups by corporates
    • Entrepreneurs to interview: David Vélez (Nubank)

Episode Mentions

You can find Marta on Twitter and LinkedIn

Recommended books: Radical Candor, by Kim Scott

Entrepreneurs: David Vélez of Nubank

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