Top Hat

Introduction
Top Hat is an educational platform co-founded by Mike Silagadze in 2009 to break
the broken educational system he saw in Canada and all across the world. His single
objective was Making Education Better for Everyone. With Top hat, Professors are
able to remain interactive with its students. It enables interactive and immersive
learning among the professors and students with the use of its online flip classroom
and gives access to cheaper textbooks for students. Finally, it enables educators to
administer polls, take attendance, host in class games or quizzes all within the
comfort of your mobile devices
I have chosen Top hat today because of its core value and the Story behind the
entrepreneur Mike Silgadze. When creating a start-up business, a core value is
important to have a distinguishable Core value. With few Phrases, a core Value
should tell you all about a company and what it represents.
Top Hat’s core value are as follows:
● “Treat instructors like heroes, elevating their work inside and outside the
classroom with compelling content and activities to engage their students”.
● “Collaborating with Co-workers and with frontline educators is the key to our
success.”
● “We work hard, we work smart and we work without ego, and know our
aggressive growth will revolutionize the university experience.”
The CEO Of Top Hat Mike Silgadze, graduated from Waterloo with a BSc in
electrical Engineering. Shortly after, he gained employment at Miovision
Technologies in Waterloo where he worked before the start-up of his student
engagement software with Mohsen Shahini. He is known for his role in active
speaking and his product is used all over the world by millions of students. I have
chosen Mike Siladagze, because his Ambitious to improve the broken educational
system and looking at his mission in the Long term, if he Every school starts to use
Top Hat it makes learning easier and school more interesting to be in. Above all
reason, the 300 talented top hatters are currently working to improve education. My
advice to young entrepreneurs, when you start a company it's important to hire
people who believe in you and maintain a healthy relationship at work.
Background and Major Investors

We all know Top hat was founded 2009, we know its founders but not as well as we
know its investors. When Top hat started, they started in an Apartment close to the
university of waterloo. After starting up, they secured a loan of $200,000 from an
angel investor in Toronto with this loan and were able to get their platform across to
universities in North America. In 2010, Top Hat had 22,000 students making use of
their platform across different universities. With such an Aggressive growth, The
Company decided to fund and raised up to $6 million for the seria Funding. In 2015,
Top hat introduced its first fully interactive textbook for organic chemistry students.
As of recent Top Hat Now has a head office downtown Toronto where they can
serve the market better. Briefly i want to take you through the company’s team
which consist of the CFO, CMO, CRO AND CTO.
The CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER(CFO), Ralf Riekers graduated from the university
of British Columbia and graduated from queen’s university with a BSc in Engineering
Physics He oversees the finance Department, operations department and human
resources department of Top hat.
The CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER(CMO), Nick stein has a master's degree in
journalism from Columbia university and a BA in English Literature. At Top Hat, “he
oversees all marketing strategy.
The CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER(CRO), john hood graduated from the university of
Texas at Austin with a BA in psychology. He previously worked at Oracle as a group
VP is Sales Development and demand generation. With Top Hat, he oversees all
functions designed to generate revenues.
The CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER(CTO), Bhavin Shah was born in India but
raised in Toronto. He graduated from the university of Toronto with a BASc in
computer engineering. He recently joined the team and oversees the development of
the software, security and application performance and company's technology stack.
Top hat is funded by leading capital firms including Union Square Ventures,
Emergence Capital, Georgian Partner, Leaders Fund and INovia Capital.
Environment upon starting

Coming up with an Idea for a business start-up is one of the easiest things to do as
an Entrepreneur. It just requires a bit of critical thinking. Where the work lies is in
analysing your business idea through the seven-market domain learned in class and
making sure it fits all the criteria. I will be working you through how Top Hat analysed
and how they were able to break the market with their product.
At the macro market domain level, Top hat was looking good because the need to
engage students in learning was rising due to the increase in price of textbooks by
1000 percent in the last 30 years. It provided its customers with the exceptional
educational experience they need to succeed. The platform provides access to
online textbooks. At the Micro level however, we targeted University students all
across North America, to be more precise university students in Canada. With Top
Hat, the market segment for students and professors in need of cheaper textbooks
and learning resources. It provides accessible textbooks and notes that students will
benefit greatly from.
In regard to the Macro industry domain level, top hat benefitted from ease of entry
being the only ones in the market, and a market bargaining power. The threat of new
entrants is Low due to the cost of maintaining the software’s and it has no more
market share. Top hat’s major competitors are Poll Everywhere, Iclicker, Echo 360,
and turning technologies. Rivalry among competitors would increase due to a
decrease in market share. At the Micro level industry, the top hat unique selling
proposition is its flip classroom with features such as: virtual classroom streaming,
Lecture recording, Attendance, Polls and Quizzes, digital textbooks, assignment and
secure online test and exams. Top hat’s products aren't easily imitable because they
are always involving.
In the team domain, we analyse the ability to execute critical success factors. One of
Top hat’s critical success has been its ability to collaborate with co-workers and
frontline educators. With this in hand, The Top Hat with the help of its Team, must
work tirelessly to maintain such a relationship. Concerning the environment factors,
Top hat must be ready for any major technology changes because we inspire
innovation. Temporal factors would be to increase it presents internationally.
Successes and challenges
Top hat team has been more than very successful over the years. Two years after
Top Hat was founded, they recorded a figure of 22,000 students and 35 universities
on their platform. As of now, Top hat has been able to attract “75 percent of the top
1,000 leading colleges and universities in North America, with millions of students
making use of its teaching platform. A second success would be the authorization of
the first fully interactive textbook for organic Chemistry.

Advice for entrepreneurs

● Build your own great team
● Know your customers so you deliver the solution they need
● Understand your industry

Outlook for the future

The Future as well as now is about to change drastically for Top hat. With the
presence of COVID-19 schools all over the world are adapting to the new Virtual
Classroom capabilities. It is set to make virtual classes more engaging, with the use
of live chat, moderation tools and video streaming. It creates lively lecture recording,
ensures student accessibility and Run test and exams remotely

Conclusion
In short, Top Hat is a very successful start-up that has been able to achieve high
aggressive growth within a few years. With its products, it has bridged the gap in
learning and making it fun for everyone including the professors. With its team, they
have successfully identified its Unique selling proposition as well as its critical
success factors so as to prevent certain decisions and activities from harming them
significantly. With the introduction of virtual classroom capabilities in the fall, top hat
would be more appealing to our target segment