Epignosis is a leading software house in learning tech and trusted by over 70,000 teams worldwide. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Epignosis co-founder and president Dimitris Tsingos to learn more about the company.
Dimitris Tsingos’ Background
Tsingos has been passionate about entrepreneurship ever since he could remember. Tsingos said:
“I jump-started this journey as an undergrad student in 2000 with the launch of Virtual Trip, the first student-founded and generally one of the first tech startups in my home country, Greece. Later, in 2012, I co-founded Starttech Ventures, a private investor and venture builder in Athens focused on SaaS companies for the international market. In this capacity, I have been the co-founder and founding investor of more than a dozen tech companies, with Epignosis being the flagship one.”
Formation Of Epignosis
How did the idea for Epignosis come together? Tsingos shared:
“My and my co-founders’ initial idea was to create an online school, called eFront, supporting Greek graduating high school seniors in their university entrance exams. But after many obstacles, failures, and pivots, we decided to change direction and restructure the company to have an international focus, building on the same principles – an extremely easy-to-use product that would turn learning into a joyful, refreshing experience. While eFront was finding early success in the international market, we recognized the SaaS wave coming into the software world and the immense opportunities that it was bringing. We then pivoted to a different target audience, small and medium-sized companies in the global market that wanted to train their employees. We were driven by our vision of creating a SaaS company that democratizes learning by making premium eLearning technology accessible and affordable to any company or organization. Since this decision in 2012, Epignosis’s premium yet affordable platforms have been chosen by hundreds of thousands of companies around the world who want to help their people grow and excel.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Tsingos reflected:
“One of my favorite memories is representing Epignosis in CloudBeat 2013 in San Francisco. It was the first event we talked about TalentLMS publicly and the first time I traveled to the US. I vividly remember the panel discussion I took part in alongside representatives of SaaS giants like Xero and other companies of this caliber. It was the first time I realized that the dream of building an international tech champion out of Greece is a pragmatic one, and it can come true.”
Core Products
What are Epignosis’ core products and features? Tsingos explained:
“Epignosis has four core products: eFront, TalentLMS, TalentCards, and TalentHR. TalentLMS, the company’s flagship product, consistently ranks as a leader in terms of ease of use and setup (in the latest independent G2 report, TalentLMS scored 91% for ease of setup vs. the category average of 86%). The platform lets you build training courses in minutes, manage users in a few clicks, and start training right away. TalentLMS also scales on demand according to users’ needs, and it’s one of the only corporate LMSs that offers a freemium account, giving course creators the power to make an informed and unrushed decision on whether TalentLMS is the right choice for them.”
“We also offer organizations the opportunity to start their training right away with TalentLibrary, an in-built collection of courses for instant soft-skills training. Animated and interactive with a cast of unique characters who take on a variety of roles. Every topic is heavily researched and each course is made up of mini-lessons between 2-3 minutes each in order to maximize learner engagement. Our portfolio also includes TalentCards, a mobile learning platform, designed for deskless workforce training. Employees can sign in from their mobile devices and complete their training any time, any place, using a native iOS and Android app.”
“Also, to address the HR needs of companies that do not have a solution yet, we have recently launched our latest product, TalentHR. The platform is a modern HRIS that offers integration with our LMS and replaces spreadsheets and helps businesses manage their employees in a simple yet consistent way.”
Evolution Of Epignosis’ Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Tsingos noted:
“Staying up to date with the latest trends in learning and HR technology is a top priority for us. The driving force of our product development is none other than our own customers. Gathering feedback regularly helps us understand their evolving needs and challenges and identify areas for improvement and new features that are then incorporated into our products. Also, we engage with industry leaders and actively seek new partnerships and collaborations with other companies in the HR tech space. By working together, we are able to offer our customers more integrations and develop new and innovative solutions. Finally, we encourage continuous education and development of our teams to maintain a high level of expertise and identify new opportunities.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Tsingos cited:
“2012: Epignosis LLC is founded, and TalentLMS, a zero-overhead cloud-based learning management system for growing businesses, launches.
2017: TalentCards, a microlearning platform for deskless workers, launches.
2020: TalentLibrary, a collection of ready-made courses for soft skills training, launches within TalentLMS.
2022: TalentLMS removes the language barrier for all Spanish speakers. Spanish-speaking customers now have access to the full TalentLMS experience in their native language: a Spanish interface, a Spanish help center, Spanish-speaking customer support and customer success representatives, as well as TalentBiblioteca, the Spanish version of TalentLibrary.
April 2023: TalentHR, an intuitive HRIS tool, launches. Its purpose is to meet the needs of small and large-scale organizations looking for a cohesive, all-in-one solution for their HR needs.
October 2023: TalentCraft Beta launches. TalentCraft is a groundbreaking AI-powered content authoring tool within TalentLMS. It is designed to empower small to medium-sized businesses, making course creation an effortless and efficient process; it enables businesses to create visually stunning and content-rich courses within minutes.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Tsingos about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Roland, a global electronic musical instruments and software company, faced sales operation difficulties when the pandemic hit. With sales and marketing offices worldwide and limited time and budget for in-person training, they moved their training online using TalentLMS within just one week. One of their biggest challenges was expanding training to distribution partners and staff in music shops globally, which they achieved thanks to TalentLMS. As Corin Birchall, VP of Global Retail Operations at Roland says, ‘TalentLMS has elevated training, from being something we do to being a key part of everything we do.” Birchall also noted “the net effect is we are going to massively upskill our workforce across the company. TalentLMS has unlocked this potential that didn’t really exist before.’”
“Rosetta Stone’s customer service department needed a way to effectively train new employees while still measuring success. In the client’s own words, they found TalentLMS to be a cost-effective solution that allowed them to organize training using customized courses and measure effectiveness through testing. They also found that it was simple to implement within their company and they were able to commence training quickly, which suited their requirements perfectly. Rosetta Stone mentions that with TalentLMS the customer service department was able to organize all training resources and create customized courses quickly. They were also able to measure knowledge absorption for content improvement and have a full understanding of how the training is working and which areas need modifying for ultimate effectiveness. Rosetta Stones noted, ‘This has improved our internal online training dramatically and streamlined the process in the meantime.’”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Tsingos affirmed:
“Epignosis is a leading software house specializing in workplace technology solutions and trusted by over 70,000 teams worldwide. We’re paving the way by making practical, scalable software accessible and affordable to every modern organization. We strive to balance usability and fit-to-purpose design by iterating on strong ideas that result in tools that organizations will love to use. We are driven by empathy, integrity, diversity, and simplicity in our pursuit of robust workplace solutions. We have collaborated with distinguished organizations across different regions and industries, including Google, Meta, Amazon, eBay, OpenAI, Rosetta Stone, Roland, Schneider Electric, Unilever, Oracle, Deliveroo, and Harper Collins Publishers, among many others.”
“The key differentiator is our products’ ease of use. Their user-friendly interface lets instructors build their training courses in minutes. TalentLMS, our flagship product, consistently ranks as an industry leader in terms of ease of use and setup: in the latest report by G2, TalentLMS scored 91% for ease of setup, well above the corporate LMS category average of 86%. Also, it was awarded a badge for the fastest time to go live (1.4 months compared to 2.4 months of its category average).”
“Our disruptive pricing and fast ROI is another factor that differentiates our products from competition. On average, TalentLMS customers see a return on their LMS investment within just 10.6 months, vs. the category average of 18.4 months (source: G2).”
“With the goal to enable SMBs to create visually stunning and content-rich courses within minutes and to boost the productivity of L&D professionals, we have incorporated AI features into our products. Last week, we introduced TalentCraft, an interactive AI-powered content authoring tool within TalentLMS. It’s a game changer for small to medium-sized businesses, enabling them to create visually stunning, content-rich courses within minutes. Its AI can create fresh new content (including visuals), improve existing texts, and even translate them to other languages. TalentCraft’s interactive features not only save time and resources but also empower instructors to keep their courses up to date in a fast-paced digital world. TalentCards, our learning platform for deskless workers, also provides the opportunity to generate microlearning courses instantly with the help of AI. It was actually one of the first platforms to integrate AI functionality for generating training courses.”
Advice For Team Building
Do you have any advice when it comes to building a talented and dedicated team for the success of a company? Tsingos replied:
“I cannot emphasize enough how important ‘the team’ is in the success of any business. Investors usually say that they make decisions after evaluating the product, the market, and the team. They all agree, however, that the team is way more important than anything else.”
“Founders and entrepreneurs need fellow human beings around to help and support them as they go about the business of making things happen. They need co-founders, managers, and people who actually do the job. Contemporary management has proven that collective intelligence is always higher and better than the best person in the team. Entrepreneurs should never forget this when assembling their team, especially during those first critical stages of setting up an organization.”
“Try to hire people better than you; try to find people who are intelligent and ambitious, yet loyal to the organization and committed to realizing its vision. Most entrepreneurs will hire people with similar or lower skills than their own; and they end up not being as successful as they can be. Never forget that it’s the team, not the individual, that will make a difference in the end.”
Insights For Aspiring Entrepreneurs
Are there any lessons or insights you’ve learned from your journey that you can share with aspiring entrepreneurs? Tsingos emphasized:
“It is clear to me now that a majority, if not all, entrepreneurs embark on their journey because of a strong internal motivation that calls them to “do something.” But wanting to just “do something” isn’t enough. You have to make sure you’re doing, or making, something that actually works and that someone else will pay for. Most entrepreneurs are also driven by a very strong sense of why. Before embarking on your entrepreneurial journey, take as much time as you need to understand your purpose or mission.”
“If you think about it, entrepreneurship is both egoistic and altruistic. It responds to a selfish need to be creative. But success only follows if enough people recognize the value in the outcome of that creativity. Once this purpose is clear, most other decisions become relatively easy to make. Which is why, at this early stage (and beyond), it’s important to ask (and keep asking) the question: ‘Who is our customer?’”
“The incredible developments with generative AI and machine learning in general make clear to everyone that ‘asking the right questions’ is the most important skill to develop in our era. Founders should excel in the activity of asking the right questions to their target customers so they can really understand their needs and, in turn, create the appropriate value propositions.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Tsingos pointed out:
“2023 marks the milestone of twenty years of my partnership with Thanos and our joint work in learning technologies, as well as the 11th year of Epignosis in the international market. I am convinced that we are still at the beginning of our journey and that our company’s brightest days are ahead of us.”
“The economy of the world is becoming increasingly knowledge-based. We anticipate a significant increase in the demand for learning technologies coming from any industry, any geography and organizations of any size. Our goal is to keep focusing on how we can make these technologies even easier to use, more affordable, and accessible to all, leveraging all technological developments and always staying human-centered. The democratization of learning has just started, and we are determined to keep doing our best to make it a reality for every business, regardless of industry, size, and geography.”
