Original Post by “Karen” on June 3, 2019
Nitesh Goel is the founder and CEO of Padlet. Padlet is an online bulletin board and it can be used to invite participants to create and to collaborate by sharing their ideas, as well as including images, videos, links, and documents in the posts. Padlet is a great interactive online tool for brainstorming ideas and sharing participants’ opinions on various topics. That said, it is a simple and useful tool for education purposes. Teachers can set up a bulletin board where students can participate by typing their answers and making learning outcome comments. There are various backgrounds for the bulletin board and students can add their thoughts to the wall which act like online post-it’s that can be viewed and edited later. You can use Padlet on any smart device for free, but for other additional features, you will have to purchase the premium plan.
Nitesh Goel is originally from Delhi, India and he attended the National University of Singapore with his childhood friend- Pranav Piyush, who is the co-founder of Padlet. According to mogulpedia.com, the prototype of Padlet was derived from Nitesh’s final year research project in 2008. It was originally called the “Wallwisher” and the concept of this site was to create a digital pad to replace paper and pen. Padlet has evolved over the years since it started in 2012.
Nitesh Goel and Pranav Piyush still run the company together alongside 8 employees. The company gain its profits from online advertisements, non-subscribed users and paid subscriber services such as Padlet Backpack (for school) and Padlet Briefcase (for business).
Nitesh employs a flexible approach when it comes to his employees. They can choose to work at home and are often encouraged to travel and go on vacation except for certain times of the year when the company is busy. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons why Nitesh owns a successful business, because as an entrepreneur, he understands the value of teamwork and respects his employees by providing them with flexibility under certain guidelines.
It is the company policy to focus on “usability” and “users” which is unique, considering most businesses focus on growth and profit. That is, Padlet protects the user’s personal private data and the user’s content. I think this is one of the aspects that makes the company successful, as it cares about the consumer’s needs and whether the product itself is user-friendly.
I would like to add to this Founder’s Parade with an interview with Nitesh Goel. It tells the genesis story of Padlet and how he took his product forward literally overnight. Nitesh, demonstrates how anyone with a great idea can found their own business.
Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF-WI0QUQ98
Nitesh Goel is a very strong role model for future entrepreneurs. He had an idea to create a digital pad to replace paper and pen and he didn’t stop until his idea and vision was realized. This perseverance and determination is what has made Padlet the success it is today.
I admire Nitesh’s unique approach to running his business; with a focus on the well-being of his employees and his consumers. By focusing his energy on his employees, he creates a positive, flexible, sustainable work environment that motivates his employees to work hard and encourages teamwork. This leads to greater efficiency within his company. By also focusing on his users, he creates an innovative, viable product that builds a great reputation due to its ease of use, cross platform compatibility, and multi-functionality.
As a side note, as an educator, I also appreciate the fact that he made a decision to keep the online brainstorming tool free to users 🙂
I take a personal interest in padlet because I’ve been aware of it for approximately 5 years and it’s utility and value has ebbed and flowed as I’ve changed jobs and specializations.
A few additional thoughts on Nitesh Goel’s characteristics/qualities as successful founder and CEO:
1. He portrays humility (almost to a fault) as well as integrity/honesty. (If you listen to the interview posted above, he frequently berates himself- admitting “I’m a terrible businessman…”, “I’m not a social media guy…” as well as apologizing for his ego/vanity in the product.) This is an attitude I can relate to and support. It may seem counter intuitive to success, yet clearly it is not. I expect this attitude can be an asset when you use it to a build a team that balances your self-acknowledged limitations.
2. The interview linked above is from 3 years ago, and spends a fair amount of time discussing the changes to pricing tiers that occurred around that time. Nitesh’s response explains how the decision was made and demonstrates the care and obligation he feels to their customer base. The “free” number of padlets you can currently use was based on data that showed 90% of their customers used this number. It was a careful decision, made to balance economic/growth requirements and customer satisfaction.
3. His genuine desire to deliver the best learning tool. He explains that he is against ads on the ‘public’/shareable spaces of padlet because students shouldn’t have to see (be distracted) by them in a learning context. He also didn’t want to create ‘lower payment tiers’ that lowered the quality of product.
It’s interesting to me that it’s not easy to dig up information about Nitesh or his team online. Even his linkedIn profile is relatively minimalistic, though I can see he is somewhat active; this lends credibility to his claim that he’s not much of a social media guy.
I also think it’s interesting that padlet’s genesis was accidental, yet even in a market that is increasingly saturated with similar tools, padlet stands out because of the quality of everything it does. Perhaps this is where passion intersects with business because clarity of vision and quality standards clearly do not need to compromise to build and maintain a successful educational technology.