On the TechTO stage ×3
Mike Silagadze of Top Hat presents a Startup Story
Watch on YouTube ↗
TechTO Together — Mike Silagadze
Watch on YouTube ↗
Michael Silagadze of Top Hat presents Using a Bottom Up Approach to Break into Enterprise Clients
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on the TechTO stage in 2018. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Mike ↗
In their words
They think that their only option is to change the market or change the product, but they forget that they can actually change the go-to-market.
The company had been funded by my credit cards and my student line of credit that the bank had forgotten to shut off. They were pretty much maxed out by the time we managed to raise our first $200,000 round of financing — which took six months, by the way.
Within the span of a week we built a remote proctoring tool, launched it on Top Hat and rolled out a whole marketing campaign promoting it. Our inbound leads ended up shooting up by over a thousand percent year-over-year.
you have really incredibly long sales cycles years often fairly small deal sizes because they're always cash strapped impenetrable bureaucracies
instead of taking years we were able to get professors to adopt top hat in a matter of weeks and that to us was really i guess a game changer
Around the web ×4
Quick answers
What is Mike Silagadze known for?
Co-founding Top Hat in 2009 with Mohsen Shahini and running the Toronto edtech company for 12 years, growing it to 400+ employees and more than 3 million students. He now runs ether.fi, an Ethereum staking protocol.
What is Mike Silagadze doing now?
He is founder and CEO of ether.fi, a non-custodial Ethereum liquid staking protocol he runs from Grand Cayman. He left the Top Hat CEO office in March 2021, stayed on its board, and started a crypto fund, Gadze Finance, later that year.
Why did Top Hat sell to professors instead of universities?
Universities told Top Hat the product looked great, then declined to buy it — their variable funding follows research and reputation, not teaching. Rather than change the market or the product, Top Hat changed its go-to-market and sold directly to professors and students, as Silagadze explained on the TechTO stage in August 2018.