How A Man With No Business Background “Lucked” His Way Into Owning A $25 Mil / Year Company – With Shai Reshef
At the University of Michigan, he studied Chinese Politics of all things, not business. But Shai Reshef was convinced to get into business by a friend who asked him to help run Kidum, an Israeli test prep company that did about $100,000 in annual sales. He ended up in the business by luck, he says. (He uses the word “luck” a lot to describe how it all happened.) That was 1989.
To grow the business, he sent salesmen to recruit students. He couldn’t afford to pay the salesmen, but he was convinced the risk would pay off when they signed up paying students, who would pay both the salesmen’s salaries and for the teachers they’d need to find. It was a risk, but it was a calculated risk. And it paid off and it helped the business grow. In 2005, it did $25 million in sales. By then, he owned the whole company. He sold it to Kaplan.
Today he’s known for founding The University of the People, the world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education. I invited him to Mixergy to talk about how he got here and what he’s doing next.
Shai Reshef is the Founder & President of University of the People, and the Chairman of the Board for Cramster.com. In 1989, Shai joined the Kidum Group, an Israeli company specializing in test preparation. The company was sold to Kaplan, Inc. in 2005. From 2001 to 2004, Reshef served as Chair of KIT eLearning, the eLearning partner of the University of Liverpool.
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