Case study: LiveMentor’s impact measures
How LiveMentor, an online school for French entrepreneurs demonstrates the impact of learning.
👋 Hi! This week, Marion spoke to LiveMentor’s co-CEO about measuring impact. We’ve got another online meetup planned for Tues 15 October. And Admissions close on Friday for our programme on Finding Product-Market Fit in EdTech.
"Measuring and proving our impact is the only way for those creating learning to be seen as an investment rather than a cost,” says Anaïs Pretot, the co-CEO of the French online school for entrepreneurs, LiveMentor.
This philosophy and a focus on how training providers make a real difference in learners' lives has been fundamental to LiveMentor’s success.
Since Anaïs and her co-founder Alexandre Dana launched the company in 2016, they’ve helped over 25,000 entrepreneurs successfully launch their projects by helping them build core skills in things like digital marketing, copywriting, ecommerce, SEO and generative AI. They do this through a blend of training, community and, of course, live mentoring.
They have been particularly successful in creating an inclusive experience. Over two thirds of their entrepreneurs are women and 94% of them live outside of Paris. LiveMentor themselves moved their offices to Aix en Provence, during the pandemic.
Measuring and demonstrating impact has been key to enabling them to do this and also helped them attract €11m of new investment led by EduCaptial in 2021. Anaïs took the time to talk to us and take us through their unique approach.
Make quality a team responsibility
Anaïs says the first pillar is the importance of operational measures to maintain quality standards during the training. "We monitor several metrics to ensure quality, including learner satisfaction and success rates,” she says.
For Anaïs, it is fundamental that each team is accountable for their work quality. “I’m not a big fan of companies where support teams have to handle all the users' issues. At Live Mentor, we distribute responsibilities and associated quality metrics every time to the closest stakeholder who can actually take action.”
“For example, each Experience Lead - who takes care of around 30 mentors - would be accountable for the impact that their mentors’ work can provide learners. The same goes for the content team who take care of the learners' tickets that relate to the material.”
This approach to operational compliance ensures that LiveMentor also fulfils its obligations as a regulated training provider that also works closely with the French regions.
Anaïs emphasises the benefits of their proactive, team-orientated approach: "Interventions are key. We monitor unexpected behaviours, such as missed appointments, and act on them as early as possible to keep our learners on track."
Take a holistic approach to impact
The second pillar revolves around the long-term impact of training. The team conducts a regular impact survey with all of their learners.
One of the key things is to understand if learners apply and use the skills in the real world. "We need to prove that skills like digital marketing or financial business modelling are used frequently and meaningfully in our learners' daily lives," Anaïs points out.
One of the unique aspects of LiveMentor’s impact evaluation is its holistic focus on the entrepreneurial journey. For example, Anaïs highlights the significance of meaningful connections formed during the training. This addresses the often-overlooked loneliness of entrepreneurs, who often work alone.
"We deliberately design into the training, significant encounters help alleviate the isolation felt by many entrepreneurs. These long lasting relationships can be instrumental in the evolution of their company. This is something we believe we also need to measure.”
She also touches on the esoteric yet crucial element of growing confidence. "A lot of what we do is also about supporting our learners into feeling ready to manage their projects,” she says. “Many of our learners gain a newfound confidence in their future and abilities."
Measuring economic outcomes and broader impact
LiveMentor is training entrepreneurs. This means that economic indicators, such as their financial stability and ability to grow revenue are important to monitor too. Their impact survey also covers these factors.
Anaïs explains, "We look at whether learners can generate income and how their businesses evolve."
Beyond outcomes for the individual, LiveMentor evaluates its impact on a broader range of stakeholders, including local communities. "We examine whether our learners' companies create jobs or foster connections with local partners - especially in regions where we know there are critical needs for economic activity." Anaïs says.
Impact is a strategic asset
For LiveMentor, it’s important that impact evaluation isn't just about collecting data but that they are also using it to inform strategic decisions.
Anaïs recounts an instance where the data revealed a lack of community feeling among learners. "So we re-prioritised community-building on our platform, rather than it happening elsewhere. Previously, we thought everything was fine, but the data showed otherwise."
For Anaïs, robust impact reporting is also an important way to enhance credibility and visibility, particularly with public authorities. "Impact reports make us a credible and influential player in our field," she asserts.
And for LiveMentor teams, impact is the North Star by which they prioritise their actions and connect their day-to-day operations to results. "We don't have a dedicated impact team yet. We're doing this in a very agile way - and it has allowed us to involve everyone, at all levels, in applying our vision for creating impact," Anaïs explains.
A vision for measuring impact
Anaïs’s vision goes beyond LiveMentor. She has an ambition to promote impact measurement and standardised impact reporting across training organisations.
"There should be common metrics for all enterprises to ensure consistency and comparability," she suggests. She acknowledges the complexity of impact measurement but firmly believes that it is feasible. "It's just not true that you can't measure impact. Of course it’s multifactorial and complex but you can agree on indicators and make meaningful comparisons."
In 2023, along with other EdTech founders and sponsored by EdTech France, she led a report addressed to the French Ministry of Labour offering a hands-on proposal to introduce a new paradigm for Impact Measurement on Professional Trainings. (You can read it in French here). Her quest for measuring impact has only just begun!
Summary
Anaïs Pretot's insights at LiveMentor underscore the importance of a structured yet pragmatic approach to evaluating learning impact. By focusing on operational quality, long-term holistic outcomes, and strategic data use, LiveMentor ensures that its programs make a real difference in learners' lives.
Here are the key takeaways:
Start with quality and make it a team responsibility. Don’t outsource this to others.
Take a holistic approach. Consider the learner journey and what is going to help them be successful. For example, making meaningful connections.
Measure broader long-term impact. Do you learners put what they’ve learned into practice and does it help them with their goals?
Bake impact into your North Star. Use this to guide team prioritisation.
Think about impact measures as a strategic asset. How can you build credibility and acquire new customers and funding by demonstrating genuine value?
If you do that, then this will help you towards realising Anaïs’ dream of helping people view learning as an investment, not a cost.
This case study features in Marion’s programme Designing Learning in the AI Era. Next cohort starts 21 October.