Good day, and welcome to the Genius Group Virtual Roadshow presentation. Today's webinar is being recorded. Before we begin the formal presentation, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made on the call and webcast include, including those regarding future financial results and industry prospects, are forward-looking, and may be subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the call. Please refer to the company's SEC filings for a list of associated risks, and we would also refer you to the company's website for more supporting industry information. At this time, I'd like to turn the webinar over to Peter Ritz, President of Genius Group. Sir, please go ahead.
Well, thank you very much for having me and, having Genius Group on this call. I am delighted to be, sharing our story together with, you today. Genius Group is the most powerful education and acceleration platform in the world today, and, I'll share with you why we're excited about its both growth prospects and the trajectory. We've tripled the company over the last, few years. And we are very excited to do this kind of same trajectory again, to run it back in the same kind of way. We'll talk about, five fundamental pillars of our business. The purpose, the promise, the people, and the product that, we're excited about, together with the predictability, of course, that financial investors are always excited about.
We did about $70 million in the pro forma revenues in 2023, and we're giving guidance that we'll do over $100 million in 2024. Serving, you know, over 5 million students in 2023, we'll be at 10 million and growing to 100 million by 2020, by 2030. We're very excited to deliver this kind of growth trajectory across several sectors, and we'll share with you kind of how that works. First and foremost, a little bit about our company at a glance. We've improved our gross margin to over 50% now, which is pretty exciting for an educational company, and we'll share with you a formula of why that is both predictable and powerful for us. We are on a very accelerated growth trajectory.
We grew the business over 150%, year-over-year. We project the same kind of excitement, acceleration going forward. We've added tremendous people to our team. Michael Moe, who was our Chair at FatBrain, the company that I joined forces with Genius from, has been a tremendous leader in both edtech and in kind of the unicorn space for many years. Started out as a research analyst. Many of you might know him. But really was the founder of Global Silicon Valley and has been successful investor in half or maybe more than half of the unicorns in that tech space, as well as folks like, you know, leading companies like Meta, Dropbox, Snap, and others.
Salim Ismail, who joined our board, but also, we're closing in on merging with his business. OpenExO has been a founding executive at Singularity University, has been incredibly successful in attracting and teaching large organizations and governments and others how to be exponential. How to really 10x their goals, either in service delivery, growth, and other disruptive technologies. Roger Hamilton, who is our CEO, is passionate about education, starting from being a chairman of the Green School out in Bali. Has been an entrepreneur, educational leader for nearly a decade, and you know, bestselling New York Times author. Is very forward-thinking in terms of what he's doing.
Adrian Reese, who's joined us from J.P. Morgan as both a leader in running the financial operations in Southeast Asia for Morgan Stanley, but also a person who understands both capital markets and compliance and disciplinary regimes on that sector. At a very, very high level, the exciting part for us is that there is a tremendous promise in this market. There is a $10 trillion opportunity for us, I'll share with you. And we believe there is a huge undervalued position that we start from, if you will, to grow ahead. Just a little bit about the market itself. We'll look at the market as a promise to capture some part of this $10 trillion by 2030.
We think there is gonna be one company that's gonna capture between 5%-10% of this market, and we are confident that we are on the right trajectory to be that company. And we have this ability to put together a really unique value proposition in education, where we can have a battle plan through OpenExO and Salim's company. A way to kind of you know, train the soldiers, so to speak, through what Roger has done with GeniusU. And you know give everybody ammunition, solutions, and others through what FatBrain has done over the years as well. But very exciting market from a perspective of both growth and opportunity.
To set just a little bit of context for the market itself, over the last few months, places from, you know, far away Singapore to kind of Middle East in Dubai to Europe and Stockholm, and, you know, Wisconsin here in the United States, have gotten infusion from both governments and hyperscalers in education. Microsoft, I think, just invested over $3 billion in this space to educate 250,000 people. Same thing in UAE, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, 150,000 people being educated. Over 150,000 people being educated in Singapore, all to be AI-ready. And that's kind of the promise of the market. It's real, it's here, and if you're not doing this, I think as a society and as humanity, you will be left behind.
So, we're very excited about the product value proposition that we have, and the product value proposition for us is both high touch and high tech. Because the problem of how education was being done in the past is not the same as presented today. That is, education through just sitting in a classroom and hoping that in years, something kind of would yield, or many, many years in a job that may, you know, leave you behind, is not a safe space anymore.
Whereas, this high touch, high tech approach that we have, which allows us to drive a customer acquisition for less than $1, and then getting out, you know, over $10 per student, is a scalable growth multiplier that we're very excited about, and is both scalable and, highly accretive all around. So this, this idea of putting in, under $1 and then scaling it across is, is one of the key differentiators that we have, both from a personal assessment perspective of how we actually attract students. There is an army of AIs that can kind of help qualify what the right passion is for a particular student and allow them to, match that to the kinds of things that the market demands and to the kinds of things that, they're good at, right?
That's a very simple diagram between what you want to do, what the market needs, and what you're good at, but that's what we're able to automate and drive tremendous cost advantage for. We have another way for the B2B business, the core business that I've been driving for last several years, to expand on that even further, whereby through the educational other advantages that Salim's been able to bring to the party through OpenExO and that network effect, we can do so much more to drive bigger value faster for the enterprise sector and for the government. Just as I mentioned earlier, there are very forward-thinking governments who wants to bring both education and AI readiness to their population and through their GDP, motivated by different reasons.
Singapore is motivated simply by growth and the future and economy of tomorrow, whereas other economies like Middle East are motivated by making their economies less petroleum dependent and more sustainable. So knowledge economy is what's driving those kind of sectors. As same things are happening in the United States, there are mayors who are now very progressive, whether it's in Miami, in Austin, or in Vancouver, in North America, who are thinking in the same way to kind of drive value.
So this creates what we call a virtuous cycle of or a genius cycle, as we call it, where there is an ability to drive something—some value from a student to an entrepreneur, to a business, and then to a government, and then keep on that circle as we drive forward. Our product advantages and sustainable kind of fundamental advantages have to do with efficient customer acquisition. We think the way to grow this business and scale at a really kind of geometric or exponential clip has to involve this kind of efficient customer acquisition. Again, less than $1 to acquire a customer for $10 of revenue.
There is a personalization that comes from this kind of a product setup, whereby there is a massive shift from just attention to intimacy. That is, how can I tell something, somebody what it is that I am passionate about so that it can guide me to my destiny? We think of our business as a GPS to help people discover what their destiny is. And it's a dynamic system because what may be marketable yesterday may not be marketable tomorrow. And what you may be interested in today may change years from now.
So that kind of dynamic of lifelong personalization, we think will drive tremendous both retention, but really a data moat for us to have a lifelong value with a customer and sustain that time over time. The online access and this ability to present really a freemium model, 95% of our students get classes for free. It's really the 5% that kind of give us value. It's the same model that Roblox and others have used to great success, to just get the audience, get them engaged, and then let them find their destiny, as I mentioned earlier. But we think that's a massive thing. Also, strongly aligned to the purpose of making education not just affordable, but really accessible to everybody globally.
And then last but not least, this ability to then start using, in really practical terms, the AI tools that are available. We've done a series of products from November, when I met with Roger, to today. We have four different micro schools that we can deliver very quickly and very effectively. Where we can drive very powerful results for both graduates who are getting certificates and then may be able to place them into a working situation because we're driving on the back end, the solution and the use case kind of ecosystem that allow us to advance. Just a little bit of snapshots of our financials.
We on an audited basis enjoyed growth of just under 30% year-over-year from 2022 to 2023, which does not include the numbers for the FatBrain kind of pro forma. And had a strong similar growth on both gross profit and on student growth. These are the kind of key metrics and guideposts that we usually track. Both on the pro forma basis, we've also experienced strong growth. This is now counting the numbers from FatBrain, so we're a $70 million business, as I mentioned. And for 2024, we've given guidance that the business is gonna throw off close to $6 million in cash. And again, the key posts are, this is 10 million students going to 100 million by 2030.
And by the way, 100 million we feel is attainable. It's the same kind of number that Khan Academy was able to enjoy in even a perhaps a smaller kind of size market. But also as we grow across cities and across nations, there is a tremendous upside for that as well. Just a little bit about market context for us in terms of both where we are on a comparative basis. So there isn't a comprehensive educational acceleration company like us in the market, but as we'll look at others who are growing, not as fast as we are, we are featuring over 50% growth.
But other companies who are in, you know, double-digit growth are enjoying high multiples, whereas we are under 1x revenue in terms of our multiple. We think there's a tremendous upside in terms of how we can both address the market and continue with this sustained value going forward. This is a little bit better explained in this next kind of overview, where the growth is charted as a function of multiple. And you see we're off the charts, but not in a way that you'd want to be.
I think, our goal really is to be off the chart that corresponds to our growth rate, and, hopefully with, with the recognition and the wider, wider acceptance and understanding of what it is that we do and how we do it, you'll, you all will help us, you know, get on in the right quadrant of the chart and really be off the chart in the right way. Just to maybe summarize a few more things. Our goal and real purpose is to meet head-on this AI challenge, disrupting both the labor market and really putting fear into the, into the, not just kind of the Edtech space, but, but others, to drive exponential growth. Our other kind of high-level target is to be at 100 million students by 2030.
Starting with $10 million this year, but to just keep growing and maybe triple the business just like we did in just a few years on kind of geometric basis. We're excited, 3x the business. We're very excited about that. We think we are at a great kind of low-cost customer acquisition space, where we can put $1 into the business and get $10 out on a predictable and milepost-based kind of assessment. And really win a significant part, 5%-10% will do, of the $10 trillion market, just because of both the acceleration of the technological uptake and the ability to drive value the right way.
That's kind of the presentation that I have today, and I would be delighted to take questions in from the folks that may have some questions.
... Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question comes from the line of Hunter Diamond with Diamond Equity. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, thank you for the update. So I wanted to see if you could give me some input onto the KPIs you're monitoring. And also, are there new KPIs with your AI offerings that you're monitoring? I don't know if it's the amount of data collected, the amount of processing, and then the existing KPIs investors should be monitoring.
Thank you very much for the question, Hunter. So there are probably 6 KPIs that we care about. And I'll kind of go through several of them here and why we think they're interesting. One of the KPIs clearly is just the number of students we have in our ecosystem. And the reason we think that's important is, as I mentioned, we have about a, you know, 5% conversion rate that we think- we think of it as a- as positioning purpose a little bit, where our purpose is to educate majority, and not just majority, 95% of the people for free, on AI, and then 5% pay because they see value.
And by the way, there is a strong retention for those kind of who are in a 95% bucket over to the 5% over time. So that's kind of one KPI that we clearly look at. Another one is, how many partners do we have? I briefly mentioned the fact early on that we enjoy kind of network dynamic both at OpenExO, who has 35,000 partners, and at Genius Group, who has 15,000 partners today. And you can think of partners as people who can either teach a micro school, or people who can kind of run a micro school, right? They can be business people or they can be actually instructors.
So there is a, you know, we have students on one hand, and it's our responsibility to bring them on board, but then it's the responsibility of the partner, if you will, to run a business and to drive value that way. So those two KPIs, just to start, is number of students and number of partners, and we think we are well on the way to kind of go, you know, 10x on both sides. So we're 10 million students to 100 million students, and then, you know, 15,000 partners to 150,000 partners to kind of support that. So those are, those are two critical ones for us. The other KPI that we're very interested in is almost like geographic go-to-market.
Where can we have a really special relationship on the ground to sell and to excite people? Because now that we have, you know, 150,000 people who understand AI, and I'm just gonna use the directive from Dubai, where we're launching an AI-ready city, if you will, together with Abu Dhabi University later this month. What does it mean to kind of have something like that? So one other KPI is just geographic location of launch and really an AI hub where people can come experience not just the micro school that's being taught, but also experience, hey, what are the solutions that are being offered? What are the kinds of tools that are available? How are other people using it?
We have over 500 different use cases, and we're gonna be kind of pushing this out to a broader, to a broader view, that people have actually used this and gotten tremendous results out of it. There are real outcomes that are there. And both being a repository for these outcomes, together with partners, together with the students, starts creating this virtual cycle that I described. But having the geographic locations, and we have three already kind of lit up this, this quarter, the quarter we're in now, in you know, Singapore, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi being the three. But there is another, you know, nine in tow that we think we can probably light up in the second half of the year. So that's another KPI that's very interesting for us.
The kind of experience that people have and how engaged they are, and the kind of amount of time people spend in kind of personal assessments is a very interesting KPI. Because this shift of attention to intimacy that I'd mentioned before in brief is a you know mega trend as we see it, where you know if you go to any education platform, there are so many things you can kind of so many choices you have there. It's like going to Netflix to find a particular show. Well, that's quite difficult, versus something that matches you specific to what your passion is and matches you to what the market really needs. So that becomes a very interesting kind of differentiator in terms of, hey, how are people spending time?
What kind of data are we able to accumulate, as you said, as you mentioned, to kind of find a GPS for your destiny, for how you wanna go to a place you really wanna be, and have that be dynamically tuned to your preferences, to your journey, right? So we think those are the kind of the half dozen things that we track and we think are a big deal. And of course, you know, average revenue per student is a big deal for us, which is, you know, somewhere around, if you do the math roughly, $200 or so.
But there are courses that are much more than that as we go forward as well. So just a few things that we keep track of and we think are interesting to kind of gain an insight into the market. Maybe one other one that I'll mention is on the KPI side for our enterprise business. You know, we have roughly $50 million of revenue in 2023 from that business and roughly 50 clients or so. So about $1 million of revenue per client feels like the right metric, and that's kind of what we're seeing with several both growth opportunities and other things as we go forward.
Great. No, I appreciate the detailed response. And then the second question, then I'll open up the line for other people. In terms of M&A, obviously, historically, the company has looked at that as an option. What are your thoughts on the current market, I guess, for M&A or just high level, for the business or versus internally developing offerings?
So we're very excited to be accretive both internally and externally. For just our, you know, internal plan, we always have a plan to grow by, you know, at least kind of 50%. That's our plan for how we think about the world and otherwise, which is kind of how we think about where we were last year and how we wanna go forward. And then we're always excited about accretive acquisitions that can add to our, our and be an accelerator, really, to our formula.
If you think about what I mentioned with driving value with students, boy, if we can get to larger number of students and our acquisition cost per student can be this sub-$1 number that we've already proven to ourselves we can do or better, it's actually tracking better with our kind of AI army. And by the way, I hadn't mentioned this, but just one small plug. If anybody just get a little of experience of Genius wants to go on, open up a Google window and just type in the word student space AI. The first app that comes up is our application. It's organic. We're not paying anything for this, but you just get a little bit of sense of kind of what's what.
But that's the kind of thing that enables us, this kind of sub-$1 cost. And if the acquisition aligns with that, boy, we're, we're excited about that because that's both accretive, and it's aligns to our handle for how we wanna grow the business. And it's probably the same thing on the revenue side. What we've done historically is bought, you know, bought businesses at 1-2 times revenue in terms of a multiple. It's, you know, not exciting to do that now with our current, kind of current valuation of how the market sees us, but we think that we can drive tremendous, tremendous value if we're in the right kind of quadrant in being graded by the market, right?
We're in a, you know, an even average of four or five times revenue, and we can buy something—we can buy revenue at, you know, one to two times, that becomes immediately accretive. To us, growth is, by design, accretive and should be kind of an accelerant. In that context, that would be the, you know, the analysis that would go through to say, "Hey, do we wanna grow organically, or do we wanna grow by acquisition? And how, how do we accelerate that?
Yeah, no, makes sense. So again, thank you for taking my questions.
Of course. Thank you very much.
Thank you. At this time, this concludes our question and answer session and today's virtual webinar. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.