In episode 40 of the Most Awesome Founder Podcast, we proudly introduce our first entrepreneurial talent of this year’s WHU Accelerator cohort. Anand Raj, co-founder of Joyon, wants to do his part to democratize education by building a platform for small content creators of live online courses.

In this episode, Anand talks about the long journey that led him from being a software engineer in India to being a first-time founder in Germany. Find out what role Covid-19 and the Kellogg-WHU Executive MBA Program played in turning his desire to start a business into reality.

Hope you enjoy listening to the episode as much as we did producing it.

Chapters:

(02:27) Introduction of Anand Raj and his start-up Joyon

(03:30) Anand’s professional trajectory from India to Germany

(07:50) First experiences in Germany and settling in

(10:42) The importance of live learning

(11:40) Corona as a catalyst

(13:33) How online learning influenced Anand’s ideas

(15:45) Use of academic entrepreneurship courses

(16:08) Development of the basic idea for Joyon

(17:27) Challenges in developing the Joyon idea

(20:05) Pivoting the business model and getting to know competitors

(24:12) Usability for live interactive course providers

(25:12) Description of Joyon’s USP

(26:43) Small providers of course content as a core customer segment

(28:48) The vision of Joyon and the democratization of education

(31:01) Talking about „golden handcuffs“ as an entrepreneur