How Griffith Uni student built $3 billion business in his friend’s garage

A group of friends have outlined how they went from broke students to a business empire.

Co-founder of Go1 Chris Eigeland in Underwood. Picture: Claudia Baxter

This article was produced in partnership with Griffith University for its 50th anniversary.

When Chris Eigeland co-founded the online learning platform Go1, he wasn’t chasing billion-dollar unicorn status. What drove him back then and what still drives him today was something much simpler and deeper – the desire to make an impact.

Ten years since it all started, Eigeland, 34, is now CEO of one of Australia’s most successful education technology companies.

With more than 610 staff in 19 countries, 50 million registered learners and a client base of more than 10,000 organisations, Go1 has been valued at over $3bn – worth three unicorns, if you’re counting.

GO1 founders Vu Tran, Chris Eigeland, Chris Hood and Andrew Barnes. Picture: Mark Cranitch

It was 2015 when Eigeland co-founded the company with Brisbane software engineer Chris Hood and two of his high school friends from Cannon Hill Anglican College, Vu Tran and Andrew Barnes, after they were accepted into the prestigious US tech accelerator for start-ups, Y-Combinator, in Silicon Valley.

What began as a web development business in their teens evolved into an online learning platform providing organisations with a vast library of training content.

The business also saw huge growth during the pandemic, when remote learning and training needs spiked.

In the early days, the team worked out of Barnes’s garage, then moved into a sloping basement office with no airconditioning in Underwood, Logan, that flooded during storms.

“In the first couple of years we were jumping around doing whatever roles were necessary to get the business to where we wanted it to be,” he says.

Originally enrolled in a design degree at Griffith University, Eigeland later decided to transfer to law. Griffith, he says, was instrumental in helping him navigate the transition.

“They were very supportive in helping me pursue the next phase of my ambition and career, even if it was an unusual one,” he says.

Go1 co-founders Chris Hood, Chris Eigeland, Vu Tran, and Andrew Barnes. Picture: Liam Kidston.

Although he didn’t end up pursuing law as a profession, he says his degree and experience at Griffith have been instrumental to his success.

“It taught me a really comprehensive form of critical thinking, analysis, evaluation and structuring arguments. I think they are fundamentally important skills, even more so now. I wrote a lot of the contracts for Go1 for the first few years, incorporating the commercial entities. It is a really helpful skillset to have no matter what career you end up pursuing,” he says.

Eigeland was also part of the Griffith Honours College (now called the Student Academy of Excellence), a cross-disciplinary leadership program that had an enormous impact on his life in more ways than one.

“I met a lot of students from the business, technology and social science departments which gave me an appreciation for all the different disciplines. It also had quite an international focus and I got to travel to a couple of different events and conferences overseas.

“That really helped instil international ambition, which was very much part of the Go1 journey from day one. I met my wife Emma in that college program too, so I also owe Griffith for that,” he says.

Co-founder of Go1, Chris Eigeland. Picture: Claudia Baxter

Despite Go1’s scale, Eigeland remains grounded. He works in the new office, still based in Underwood, three days a week and spends the rest of the time working from home in Bulimba, in Brisbane’s east, juggling meetings with swimming classes for his three-year-old son, August. He and Emma recently welcomed their second son, Felix, now three months old.

Although once again battling the sleep deprivation of newborn parenting, there’s no stopping Eigeland from guiding Go1 through its next major transformation, this time driven by generative AI.

The company’s new product, Go1 Learn, was recently released to reflect a new reality in workplace learning.

“The first wave of AI is going to be about automating and making the mundane things that are quite laborious and repetitive much more efficient, but I actually think that’s more exciting than it sounds.

“What we’re focusing on at Go1 is if you can automate the kind of really mundane things that learning and development leaders, HR leaders and ultimately learners have to do, that unlocks them to spend so much more time on higher order, far more impactful things.

“Where someone may have spent 15 minutes searching the right bit of content to coach them on presentation skills, if we already know your role is this role, and your location is California, and you prefer to learn this way, then we can point you directly to that in seconds. And if you’re doing that multiple times a week or a day, then we’ve just saved you a lot of time,” he says.

As Go1 enters its second decade, Eigeland is focused on building not just smarter technology but a smarter approach to learning that gives people more time, adapts to their needs and unlocks their potential.

Founders Vu Tran, Chris Hood, Andrew Barnes and Chris Eigeland.

He sees the next wave of AI as being about hyper-personalisation – learning experiences tailored not just to a person’s role or industry, but their preferences and goals.

“It’s the biggest shift in technology since mobile phones and it will change nearly everything about how people work … The future is extremely exciting,” he says.

What began in a garage and flooded basement has grown into a global force helping millions of people upskill and thrive in a fast-changing world. For Eigeland, that’s the impact that matters most.

In partnership with Griffith University

Originally published as How Griffith Uni student built $3 billion business in his friend’s garage