2020 starts with a leadership change for BitDegree. Danielius Stasiulis, the former chief business development officer, will now lead the company as the CEO. This change also marks a shift in the company’s focus: from building the underlying technology to bringing it to the market.

Danielius Stasiulis is a co-founder of BitDegree, and has been one of the key people to develop the vision of the company and share it globally. He has over a decade of management consulting experience, particularly focused on advising startups and developing startup ecosystems internationally. “The competencies in understanding and realizing complex business models and engaging high-level stakeholders are the core strengths of Danielius. We believe that is exactly what BitDegree currently needs,” – Ervinas Rimdeika, the former CEO, said.

Shift in Focus: from Tech Development to Market Uptake

For the last couple of years, BitDegree has been focusing on building the most technologically advanced online learning platform that integrates the entire ecosystem of stakeholders to create a new value proposition for the learners. The end of 2019 has marked the completion of the technological development roadmap, set out in the initial white paper of the platform.

BitDegree has received significant international recognition for its technology from such entities as the World Summit Awards by the UN, European Innovation Council Horizon Prize on Blockchains for Social Good, and EdTechXEurope. Now, BitDegree plans to realize the potential impact of its technology by executing the go-to-market strategy under the leadership of D. Stasiulis.

The company plans to build relationships with reputable content providers, including universities that hope to expand online and are willing to provide micro-degrees and, as well as employers interested in attracting reskillers directly from the learning platform. Moreover, BitDegree is already working to provide education for free and even paying reskillers to learn through its scholarships program. To achieve this goal, the platform is actively seeking to attract institutional and individual donors. A successfully developed stakeholder ecosystem is necessary to build a robust infrastructure for learners to reskill or upskill into digital careers affordably and conveniently in a one-stop-shop style.



The New CEO Addresses the Company

Stepping up to his new role, Danielius has addressed the team: “My mission is to bring external stakeholders to the BitDegree platform, integrate our products into their existing value chains and build completely new ones, such as just-in-time talent production and risk-free reskilling for learners. We can offer this because we have digitalized the core education–employment processes and now we can better align the incentives of the parties involved.”

The new CEO also emphasized a few core principles he plans to instill: “First, we must create significant value to the learners and provide complete reskilling experience until they get a job. We shall also focus on content quality, its recognition by employers. We shall eliminate financing as an obstacle to reskilling through employer and donor-funded scholarships. Lastly, we will get ahead of competition by having the best learning motivation system, which helps learners achieve great learning results. We will continue researching this subject with world-class experts, such as the Octalysis Group, Vilnius university, and others.”

At the end of his speech, D. Stasiulis thanked his predecessors – Andrius Putna for building the platform’s technology infrastructure from scratch and Ervinas Rimdeika for restructuring the team and preparing it for the long-term growth.

Danielius Stasiulis: Native to the Startup World

Prior to becoming the CEO of BitDegree, Danielius spent over 10 years at Civitta, the leading management consultancy firm in the Emerging Europe with offices in 15 countries and 350+ employees. He was one of the first to join the company and contributed to its growth, most notably by developing the Innovation stream. He has also launched a 20-people-strong NGO powered by Civitta – the Startup Division, focused on building startup ecosystems and startup support programs in Europe and beyond.

Danielius has worked with 300+ startups, launched 10+ acceleration programs in Europe, and was exposed to Silicon Valley as a visiting scholar with the focus to build international programs for the U.C. Berkeley Skydeck accelerator. For his entrepreneurial achievements, he was awarded as one of the five most distinguished alumni of Junior Achievement Lithuania over the last 25 years in 2018, and as a prestigious Junior Achievement FERD’s list honouree in 2019.

About BitDegree

BitDegree is an online learning platform for digital skills with blockchain-based credentials and incentives system. It currently has 600k+ learners from 146 countries enrolled in 1.7m courses. The company consists of 20 employees in Kaunas, Lithuania. BitDegree’s advisors include Silicon Valley-based Jeff Burton, the co-founder of one of the world’s leading gaming companies - Electronic Arts.

Contact Information

Andzelika Zukauskaite​

Chief Marketing Officer,

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