Feature · checked 29 September 2026
Before Go1 sold learning, GO1 sold websites.
An August 2014 listing for a Brisbane agency selling Drupal builds, Salesforce integration and an in-house learning system called Aduro, by the founders who went on to build Go1, the $2 billion workplace learning company.
On 19 August 2014, GO1 added itself to Stompstart with a pitch that could have belonged to a hundred agencies: "Intelligent Business Solution." The description was just as broad. "We make digital products that are intuitive, elegant and cutting edge," it said. "Whether you are looking for an eLearning tool, an intelligent business solution or a customised web project, GO1 are here to help."
The screenshot uploaded that day is more specific, and it is the best record of what GO1 was. Under the heading "Strategic Digital Solutions" sit four tiles of equal size. One is Aduro, a learning management system that "allows you to streamline and enhance your education and training practices." Next to it is Mapely, a business product. Below them, Drupal work: "GO1 is one of Australia's premier Drupal web design and development agencies." Beside that, Salesforce consulting, with a tool called OneSync for syncing Salesforce with Mac contacts and calendars. Further down, the company blog explains Google's brand-new Material Design. The footer is signed "Copyright GO1 2014."
Learning was one tile of four.
A month after the listing, in September 2014, StartupSmart reported that "after beginning as a web agency, the company has shifted its focus to the online learning space," with co-founder Andrew Barnes explaining that clients kept asking GO1 to build them e-learning portals. GO1's own entry in the 2014 Anthill Smart 100 says the same thing from the inside: "We launched Aduro LMS in 2012," after clients asked the team for custom learning systems. Board member Steve Baxter later wrote that when he first met the company it had goCatalyze and "a Learning Management System, Aduro, (which ultimately evolved into the GO1 we know today)."
Go1 in Y Combinator's Summer 2015 batch was a learning platform, founded that year by Andrew Barnes, Chris Eigeland, Vu Tran and Chris Hood. Go1's own About page dates the company to 2015 and does not mention the agency.
Barnes's own account of the handover is not quite StartupSmart's. Barnes told Yahoo Finance in 2022 that he and Vu Tran had moved from a product business into professional services, that while he was studying at Oxford from 2014 "it was the time to close the business and sell it off," and that the founders regrouped six months later to build Go1. So the line from the 2014 listing to today's company runs through the same people, the same name and the same idea, Aduro. Whether it is one unbroken company the record does not settle, and we have not established whether any of the agency's legal entity carried over.
What came next is on the record. In June 2022, Go1 announced it had raised more than $100 million at a valuation above $2 billion. In May 2023 it bought Blinkist, the book-summary app. In August 2024, Startup Daily reported that Barnes had stepped down as co-chief executive, leaving Chris Eigeland in sole charge. The old go1.com.au address now redirects to go1.com, where Go1 sells a workplace learning subscription drawing on content from more than 300 providers.