How doinstruct revolutionizes the training of frontline workers

Frontline workers are those who have direct contact with customers, products or machines, such as warehouse, production, care or sales staff. They are often the face and heart of a company, but also the ones with the least access to digital training and the greatest need for it. HTGF portfolio company doinstruct aims to change this with an innovative platform for training frontline staff. Based in Osnabrück, Germany, doinstruct has had an impressive growth story since 2021. We sat down with Charlotte Rothert, co-founder and CEO of doinstruct, and Christian Arndt, Principal at HTGF, to learn more about the founding story, the recent funding round with Creandum and the startup’s vision.

Charlotte, how did you come up with the idea for doinstruct?
Charlotte Rothert: I am a trained farmer and have restructured large farms, i.e. farms with many employees with very different backgrounds. I have learnt how important well-trained employees are for the success and productivity of a farm. I invested a lot of time in training but could not find a digital solution that met my expectations. Almost all of the solutions were made by desk workers for desk workers, not for the 80% of the population in the farm or commercial areas.

Then Thorsten contacted me, my current co-founder, who had the same problem in industry. He was using e-learning that only reached office workers. He also had an app, but it was only being downloaded 30% of the time. So there was a huge gap between what was available and what the frontline workers needed.

So I brought on board my second co-founder Daniel, the technical brains behind doinstruct. We searched for a tool that was accessible, simple, multi-lingual, fully integrated and automated into the existing IT infrastructure and could reach every employee. And we found nothing that convinced us. We then surveyed 1000 employees to find out what training would be needed to reach everyone. We built the first prototype and iterated quickly. Later, Thorsten joined as a co-founder. He was so excited about the idea that he wanted to be part of it. And a few weeks ago, Mona joined us, our fourth co-founder, an absolute product luminary who complements us perfectly with her experience.

What does doinstruct do and how does it benefit the employees and the company?
Charlotte Rothert: Training frontline staff has never been easier than with doinstruct. Many companies do not reach their employees without a fixed desktop workstation and train them awkwardly via computers in production or in long face-to-face training sessions. The training rates are low, not sustainable and not understandable for employees due to language barriers and sometimes lack of language skills. With doinstruct, training can be fully automated, anytime, anywhere, on a smartphone or tablet, without the need for a desktop workstation or an email address. And most importantly, before the first day of work, in the employee’s native language.

We also realised that there is a lot of mandatory training in every industry that is 80% the same and needs to be updated in every company. And we make this training available to our customers as a library. Over 100 videos in 20 languages, short and crisp with storytelling elements. Customers can then combine or customise the training to suit their needs, for example by adding a short reel or existing material.

In this way, they can automatically keep their employees up to date, save up to 70% of training costs and reduce implementation times from sometimes more than two months to two hours. We also track training results and progress, so organisations always know who has what skills and how effective training is. Or prepare for audits or reviews at the touch of a button.

Christian, how did you hear about doinstruct and what convinced you to invest?
Christian Arndt: I first became aware of doinstruct when I was giving a talk at the Venture Club in Münster, Germany. Co-founder Thorsten was in the audience and approached me afterwards. Both, the team and the product convinced me. I had a good feeling from the beginning that this would be a good fit on a personal level. They are also solving a real problem for a lot of companies that employ frontline workers. And they did it not from one of the big start-up hotspots, but from Osnabrück, where they also have a good connection to their target group. In addition, all three have a relevant track record in the area they are in. So they have the know-how, the network and the passion to build a successful business. And they have proven this over the past two years.

And how did the collaboration between you work out?
Charlotte Rothert: We learned a lot from Christian and the HTGF. He always calibrated us well, gave us tips, recommended podcasts, invited us to events. He was our cheerleader and always drummed up publicity, but also our sparring partner. He always asked us the right questions, challenged us, supported us, encouraged us. He was always available when we needed some advice or had an idea.

Christian Arndt: I can only give that back. The team was always very open, honest and proactive. We never had the feeling that anything was hidden or embellished, so that we could always go into sparring on an equal footing. This way we could discuss challenges and strategies and find solutions together. The team also always showed a lot of initiative, educated themselves and developed further. You could practically watch them grow, both on a personal and on an entrepreneurial level.

Charlotte, you just closed a 7.6 million € seed financing round with Creandum. How did you experience that?
Charlotte Rothert: We asked ourselves: Who do we want to work with, where do we want to go, who fits our journey? We had a long list, but Creandum was one of our preferred partners right from the start. We had a lot of interest from investors, but at first we put them off because we wanted to achieve our figures and get our work done first. When the interest became so great that we could no longer ignore it, we said: OK, we are going to do a quick fundraising round. And it was a really quick round. We got a termsheet within eleven days. It was a mixture of good execution and good preparation. And of course to Creandum, who just know how to run a great fundraising process and got us to say no to 25 other investors.

Christian Arndt: I think the success shows that the team has developed a product that meets a real market need and effectively solves the customer problems. That is the basis to make such a financing round possible at all. The financing round is an important milestone on the way to a market-leading company. The foundation for this was laid by the team through their excellent operational work and their focus on the customer needs and the product.

And what are the next steps and goals for doinstruct?
Charlotte Rothert: We still have a lot to do. We want to expand into new verticals, because we believe that our solution is relevant for many industries. Today we are in the food industry, logistics and construction. In the short term we will also cover manufacturing. We also want to grow internationally, because we have customers who also have locations outside of Germany who want to work with us. We already have 20 languages on offer, that is a big advantage. We also want to further develop our technology, especially in the area of AI enablement. We want to make the topic of content creation even smarter and more automated. We have the big goal of offering only 10% human-generated content by 2026. We also want to develop further products, for example we just launched a visitor module that trains not only the employees, but also visitors and external service providers.

What are your most important advice to founders in the early stage?
Christian Arndt: My biggest piece of advice is to always focus on solving the customer’s problem. If you don’t, you’ll end up with a product that nobody needs. Doinstruct did that perfectly, they always had the customer in mind, always got feedback, always optimised and finally achieved a good product-market fit. And that was reflected in the numbers and the results.

Charlotte Rothert: I think it was also very good that we started during the crisis. That showed us how important it is to work counter-cyclically, i.e. not to be influenced by external circumstances, but to focus on your strengths, to use your opportunities, to find your position. Another piece of advice I would give is not to be ashamed of releasing something early that is not perfect. We did that too, we threw out our MVP, which was not the coolest solution on the planet, but it solved a clear pain and we could sell it. We interviewed 1000 people first, built prototypes, tested, moved on. Only then did we go for perfection. I think that helped us the most in the beginning.

Thank you for these exciting and valuable insights!