Q+A with InsideSherpa Co-Founder, Tom Brunskill

TLF Connect Mentee Brianna Brown virtually met with Tom Brunskill, Co-Founder of InsideSherpa, to discuss how he and business partner Pasha Rayan designed a learning platform that’s revolutionised educational technology globally. 

What is InsideSherpa?

InsideSherpa is an open access, virtual platform which has been designed for students looking to obtain practical work experience through company endorsed programs. 

What was the catalyst for creating InsideSherpa with co-founder, Pasha? 

The genesis of InsideSherpa really came from our own personal experiences during university, as we had come to realise firsthand the substantial inequity that existed within the employment market for students. Often, those who were successful in securing paralegal positions (or other similar junior roles) were either from a very similar background or had direct connections to their employers. 

As a then law student at the Australian National University in Canberra, I observed many of these inequities first-hand! However, I quickly realised that the geographical and financial barriers that existed for many students, were at the very least, prohibitive in what was clearly an already competitive market. Before even getting to the clerkship stage, it seemed as though there was such an immense pressure on students to have already obtained the relevant skills and experience needed to be successful in a graduate role. This seemed particularly inequitable and unfair to students. 

When we dug deeper into the issue, we also saw a gap that existed between what is taught in university and what is expected in the professional workplace. When I walked into a law firm, I felt immediately unprepared for the world of work. I didn’t know how to leave a voicemail, how to communicate with team members, how to deliver commercial and succinct advice and so on. The firms I worked for had to spend significant time, effort and resources retraining myself and peers in these areas. Based on these experiences, I wanted to build a tool which could front-end this learning experience so that other students who entered the legal industry after me wouldn’t have to go through the same steep learning curve. 

It was here that InsideSherpa was born.  

How have you seen educational technology evolve through InsideSherpa?

In its first iteration, InsideSherpa was a mentoring marketplace, which connected interested students with established professionals in their relevant field. However, we quickly realised that the advice being given by our mentors could also be found elsewhere in firm-sponsored university events, online seminars and other like resources. We wanted to offer students access to something they didn’t have - the ability to truly test out legal careers and build actual skills in a low-pressure open-access environment. . 

Despite the program’s obvious benefits, we soon realised that our mentoring marketplace still did not solve the underlying problem of access to work experience opportunities. 

Over the next year or so, InsideSherpa evolved from a small network of approximately 100 new students per week to our current platform which welcomes up to 5,000 new students per day. Whilst it has certainly not been a quick or by any means easy process, I think the growth is testament to the resourcefulness, curiosity and willingness of students to upskill themselves in online skills-based educational programs. 

What challenges did you initially encounter when creating InsideSherpa?

Where to begin!

One of our biggest challenges in the start-up process was confronting outdated modes of thinking in student recruitment. We had found that almost all employers couldn’t see past the ‘hire now, train later’ strategy. 

You only had to look at the high attrition rates, particularly in legal and consulting industries, to see that students were ill-equipped with knowledge of what their chosen career path practically entailed prior to starting a graduate position. The problem here was obvious; students were walking blindly into graduate roles without first having an appreciation of their interests and how their skills and passions would be best suited to particular industries. 

At InsideSherpa, we have set out to create a platform which reverse-engineers this process so that a ‘train now, hire later’ model can be adopted for the benefit of both students and potential employers. In this way, we hope to be able to assist each party in determining whether or not they are a mutual fit for one another. As such, it can be said that InsideSherpa’s employer-sponsored programs are just as powerful in telling students what they should do, from what they shouldn’t!

Fast forward to more recent times (having incorporated InsideSherpa in the US). What challenges have you encountered as an Australian startup in the US? 

It may sound simple - but being an Australian transplant in the US isn’t always easy. I didn’t go to school here, I didn’t have investors here, I didn’t even have friends here when I moved. I had my co-founder, a laptop and a basic product!As such, establishing our first partnerships in the US was hard!

The Australian temperament isn’t always that suited to the US either. That’s because, perhaps unlike our American counterparts, we don’t feel as comfortable selling ourselves and we typically ‘underpromise and overdeliver’ while (some!) Americans take the opposite approach. 

My co-founder and I really grappled with this in the early stages of pitching InsideSherpa to potential US investors. Despite not having the same indelible conviction that many other US start-up founders had, we firmly believed in our platform and the potential it had to change the game in EduTech. I’ve learned the hard way that you should never water down your ambition to appease fears that you might stick out! 

Where do you think there is opportunity for growth and further innovation in EduTech?

Through our research, we’ve discovered that 80-90% of the tools lawyers use are online tools. We are a technology enabled society. Personally, we figured that the best way to teach the skills that employers wanted, was to digitally simulate the tasks which would ordinarily be completed by graduates for the benefit of interested students.

At InsideSherpa, we work with employers to create tasks which have been specifically designed for juniors, like yourself. We often find that these tasks have been introduced into our employer sponsored programs as a result of the feedback they’ve received from their own graduates which is very useful. 

This stylised approach to learning is something we will continue to develop as InsideSherpa’s platform evolves. It is for this reason that we believe that future innovation, particularly in the EduTech space, will likely have the biggest impact where there is open accessibility and scalability. 

Do you have any book recommendations for students interested in pursuing their own entrepreneurial ventures?

I’m not much of a reader myself, but I’ve come across a few good books. 

For people that are thinking about founding their own company, I would recommend reading ‘Zero to One’ by Peter Thiel. (https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296)

Putting aside the ideological rhetoric surrounding the book (which I didn’t realise until later in life!), I read, ‘The Fountainhead’ by Ayn Rand at a young age which had a profound impact on me.(https://www.amazon.com.au/Fountainhead-Ayn Rand/dp/0141188626/ref=asc_df_0141188626/?tag=googleshopdsk-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=341772727888&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=4566176699947560027&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9071264&hvtargid=pla-466732860943&psc=1)

‘The Mom Test’, written by Rob Fitzpatrick is a book every founder should read. It gives super practical advice and a process for working out whether your start up idea really has ‘legs’. (https://www.amazon.com.au/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-ebook/dp/B01H4G2J1U)

And all founders should read essays by Paul Graham - http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

If you would like to find out more about InsideSherpa, head to (https://www.insidesherpa.com) for more information.