10 minutes with… LAAMP founder Tim Angel
Business Insight spoke with the founder of SA-based education platform LAAMP about scaling rapidly, his journey from school ‘ratbag’ to entrepreneur and the company’s new backing from Theiss.
Tim Angel’s LAAMP is an education platform used by 90,000 people in the mining and heavy industries to make safety training engaging.
His success is a far cry from his time as a ‘ratbag’ at school, with LAAMP now operating across five continents and used by government bodies and global mining infrastructure companies.
One client is Theiss – the world’s largest mining services provider – which just extended its five-year engagement with LAAMP by becoming a significant shareholder in the Adelaide-based business.
Business Insight spoke with the founder of SA-based education platform LAAMP about growing pains, his personal journey and the company’s new backer.
You’ve scaled globally in such a short period of time – what do you attribute to the business’ quick growth?
LAAMP’s growth has really been driven by necessity. Having worked in the mining and resources industry for several years, I’ve experienced the day-to-day challenges and inefficiencies firsthand. I’ve witnessed old-fashioned compliance systems that involve an enormous paper trail and have seen inconsistent training across dispersed teams.
LAAMP is essentially a central, digital platform that modernises the way organisations induct, train, and assess their workforces. Workers have their own digital dashboard, and can access their training on any device, at any time.
Many SaaS companies build a product based on a hunch, sell the idea to investors and keep iterating internally until it feels perfect. This can take years for a solution to go to market only to realise it’s not fit for purpose. We identified a need and then engaged directly with industry partners from the get-go, testing our product in real-world environments.
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One of our key partners, Thiess, the world’s largest mining services provider, has been pivotal. By collaborating with them, we not only validated our solution but also leveraged their global presence to rapidly expand our footprint. From here, we were able to leverage our other working partnerships. Such collaboration, endorsement and support have allowed us to scale faster than we ever imagined.
We’ve facilitated 25 million training events, saving our customers 1.2 million hours annually, and have more than 90,000 users across 15 countries.
Growing pains are an issue for any business, but especially one that’s scaled so quickly. What did you have to overcome?
Scaling rapidly has its challenges, and I’ve certainly faced my fair share. Managing cash flow was one of the biggest early struggles. We were hiring rapidly to keep up with demand, but this was stretching our finances. Despite this pressure, I believed in our vision and knew we had to stay the course, so we pushed through. Timing was crucial and we were one of the fortunate ones – our revenue soon caught up and could then live to fight another day.
There were also technical and operational hurdles. I remember one of our early product rollouts where everything was set for a go-live, but we ran into issues. This meant staying up all night and trying to work through to find a solution only to discover it wasn’t going to be resolved in time. I was devastated and remember feeling such intense pressure that I was nauseous. The entire site was prepped, and the clock was ticking. Delays in the mining sector are very costly. To have to subsequently delay was inevitable in this case, but the conversation had to be had rather than push to rollout that day.
There’s also the impact on time and family. Building a business demands everything, and there has been lots of travel. I was physically away or mentally absorbed, making it tough to be fully present with loved ones. But through these struggles, the learning and growth has been immense.
Tell me about your time at school – you’re a self-described ‘ratbag’. How did that inspire your work at LAAMP?
Yes, I was definitely a ‘ratbag’ at school. For me, it was all about the ‘why’. If I didn’t understand why I was learning something, I’d simply shut off. Then I needed something to keep me entertained, so I often chatted with my friends in class, which I imagine would have been quite distracting.
I couldn’t see the value in learning things like languages that just weren’t applicable to my future. If I felt forced to learn something without a clear purpose, it felt like a waste of time.
My own experience of learning is the reason why I created a training platform that is modular and delivered in small easy-to-digest chunks. The LAAMP platform allows for various learning techniques, including experiential learning with virtual and augmented reality, so it caters for all kinds of people.
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As a kid when I was engaged in something I enjoyed I committed 100 per cent, and I often did well. That focus has translated into my work with LAAMP. In business, I’ve always been able to see the ‘why’ behind our product, and the impact it has.
Do you think some of the insights you’ve gained from the success of LAAMP could be translated into the school environment?
Absolutely. I think there’s a huge opportunity to rethink education to make it more relevant and practical. To shift the thinking from just teaching subjects or curriculum for the sake of it or because it’s what has been done in the past. For example, in primary and high school there isn’t much education around entrepreneurship or building a business and for some individuals these are extremely important skills.
In essence, I had to learn the hard way once I entered the business world. To this day I have only ever run my own businesses. I have been fortunate to have some great mentors and advisors around me who have been a great support and provided guidance. If schools could incorporate real-world learning and business fundamentals earlier on, as well as pair individuals up with real-life mentors, students could leave with skills they could actually use in areas they enjoy. This can be a lot more powerful than just theoretical knowledge.
What are some technological innovations that excite you about the future of LAAMP?
We’re seeing an exciting shift in remote and distributed workforces. The pandemic has transformed how we work, and technology has made it possible for us to collaborate globally, seamlessly. The way we learn and access information is also changing. We no longer must read an entire book to be assessed or find an answer to a portion of it while the rest then slowly becomes irrelevant.
Technology is fast and accessible and allows us to search and access the specific information we need instantly. The ability to upskill remote and distributed workforces is something we’re harnessing at LAAMP. We’re taking this one step further and allowing individuals to hold their skills and credentials through a LAAMP passport solution. The passport means training and accreditation can be much more efficiently proven when a worker moves between job sites.
Remote induction, including virtual reality tours of a site, also makes things incredibly time efficient. And with photo or video capture to prove who has undertaken training and when, a company’s ability to ensure staff training is up to date is much greater, and the risk of litigation is significantly reduced.
These tools, together with advancements in AI and other technologies, will allow us to provide more value to our clients, delivering faster and more effective solutions.
What’s next for you and LAAMP?
For me personally, the focus remains on growing LAAMP, continually improving features within the training platform and also expanding into new global markets. I’m committed to ensuring LAAMP continues to evolve, addressing the real challenges faced by the mining and heavy industries worldwide, as well as ensuring its transferability into other sectors in which we operate like healthcare and government.
We’ve recently received strategic investment from Thiess, the world’s largest mining services provider. This partnership is especially significant because Thiess was one of our cornerstone customers when they adopted our platform to centralise and digitise their global induction, training, and assessment processes across their workforce.
The Thiess investment allows LAAMP to accelerate our growth and boost market credibility. However, we still retain majority ownership, which means we maintain the flexibility to innovate and drive our vision forward, backed by a trusted global partner.
We’re using this investment to enter new regions and localise our products and services, ensuring they fit the unique needs of diverse markets around the world. This global push allows us to capture a broader international customer base and establish our presence in key mining hubs. The investment also means we can continue to expand our R&D efforts to be at the forefront and stay competitive. We’re focused on adding new features, enhancing existing ones, and experimenting with cutting-edge technologies such as AI.
Our focus will remain on servicing our clients, staying relevant, and being present in the field. But we’re also exploring opportunities beyond the B2B space, looking into the B2C market to see how we can expand our reach and impact for individual consumers.
