Nitesh Goel is the founder and CEO of Padlet. Padlet is an online bulletin board and it can be used to invite participants to create and to collaborate by sharing their ideas, as well as including images, videos, links, and documents in the posts. Padlet is a great interactive online tool for brainstorming ideas and sharing participants’ opinions on various topics. That said, it is a simple and useful tool for education purposes. Teachers can set up a bulletin board where students can participate by typing their answers and making learning outcome comments. There are various backgrounds for the bulletin board and students can add their thoughts to the wall which act like online post-it’s that can be viewed and edited later. You can use Padlet on any smart device for free, but for other additional features, you will have to purchase the premium plan.
Nitesh Goel is originally from Delhi, India and he attended the National University of Singapore with his childhood friend- Pranav Piyush, who is the co-founder of Padlet. According to mogulpedia.com, the prototype of Padlet was derived from Nitesh’s final year research project in 2008. It was originally called the “Wallwisher” and the concept of this site was to create a digital pad to replace paper and pen. Padlet has evolved over the years since it started in 2012.
Nitesh Goel and Pranav Piyush still run the company together alongside 8 employees. The company gain its profits from online advertisements, non-subscribed users and paid subscriber services such as Padlet Backpack (for school) and Padlet Briefcase (for business).
Nitesh employs a flexible approach when it comes to his employees. They can choose to work at home and are often encouraged to travel and go on vacation except for certain times of the year when the company is busy. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons why Nitesh owns a successful business, because as an entrepreneur, he understands the value of teamwork and respects his employees by providing them with flexibility under certain guidelines.
It is the company policy to focus on “usability” and “users” which is unique, considering most businesses focus on growth and profit. That is, Padlet protects the user’s personal private data and the user’s content. I think this is one of the aspects that makes the company successful, as it cares about the consumer’s needs and whether the product itself is user-friendly.