
Welcome to Transform’s Founder Spotlight Series, an exciting journey into the minds of innovative leaders who are disrupting the now and next of work.
In each Q&A-style article, we’ll introduce you to founders like Michael Ioffe, Co-Founder and CEO of Arist, who are redefining the boundaries of their industries with forward-thinking ideas and transformative approaches.
About Michael Ioffe
Michael Ioffe is the co-founder and CEO of Arist, which helps organizations like WHO, HP, and Takeda deliver research-driven learning directly in the flow of Teams chat and SMS. Started five years ago as a way to deliver learning in war zones, Arist has become the industry leader in learning in the flow of work and AI course creation.
At 25, Michael is the youngest CEO of any Enterprise Learning company globally and has been recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30, Thiel Fellow, and Weissman Scholar for his work. Before starting Arist, Michael founded TILE.org, one of the world’s largest entrepreneurship education nonprofits.

About Arist
Arist is the leader in autonomous learning. We’re obsessed with delivering the right learning at the right place at the right time, both through our core platform and through Teammate, the first AI employee for L&D teams.
Arist’s core platform helps enterprises like HP and Dropbox rapidly convert collateral into training with AI + push training in critical moments of need, all in the flow of Teams chat, Slack, and SMS. By meeting people where they are, Arist helps teams launch training 10x faster, lift performance by 19%, and drive >90% adoption and satisfaction rates.
Arist Teammate, our next-gen AI agent product, handles the entire training launch process end-to-end — from needs analysis and SME interviews to deliver and data reporting. Arist Teammate increases speed-to-launch by over 100x.
Startup Journey:
Transform: What gave you the idea to start Arist?
Michael: In 2019, I was a 19-year-old college student running TILE.org, one of the world’s largest entrepreneurship education nonprofits. We were struggling to deliver learning in the Yemeni conflict zone, where internet and laptop access was limited, and realized that everyone had access to a phone with SMS or WhatsApp. We also started realizing that the traditional way of delivering learning — via e-learning and VILT — wasn’t actually driving real performance impact and that there was a ton of research indicating that bite-size, spaced-out learning in the flow of work was far, far more effective.
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in the early stages?
Michael: No one believed that you could actually deliver training and improve performance via a text message-based course — it’s a scary idea for a lot of people and goes against what most L&D practitioners have been taught for decades. We’ve now thoroughly proven that Arist is far more effective than any other learning modality, with both client data and research from MIT, Stanford, and the University of Washington indicating that Arist drives clear performance lift.

Product Development:
Transform: Who benefits from Arist?
Michael: We’ve seen particular success with busy professionals, distributed workforces, and organizations looking to scale their training efficiently to massive audiences, especially in complex and hard-to-reach settings. Arist benefits learners by giving them bite-sized, actionable knowledge right in the tools they use every day (vs. sending them to an LMS they never use), and it benefits companies by providing a highly engaging, measurable way to upskill their workforce while saving both L&D teams and employees tons of time.
Transform: Why is this so important?
Michael: In today’s fast-paced world, continuous learning (and speed to learning delivery) isn’t just nice to have — it’s essential. But traditional learning methods often fail because they’re too time-consuming or disconnected from daily life and extremely time-consuming to launch as well. By making learning a daily habit through text messages and by using AI to automate the creation experience, we’re helping people and organizations stay competitive and adaptable. It’s about democratizing knowledge and making personal growth accessible to everyone, regardless of their schedule or location, and actually driving real performance outcomes.
Transform: What are some examples of companies leveraging Arist?
Michael: HP has used Arist to upskill their entire organization on AI. The State of California uses Arist to deliver scalable disaster prep state-wide in 7+ languages, and BMO integrated Bank of the West, a major acquisition, through Arist. It’s been extremely powerful across sectors and use cases.
Transform: What have you learned from your users and customers so far?
Michael: Employees love it when learning comes to them. Today, 92% of employees prefer Arist to e-learning, and we’ve really deeply understood how much user experience matters (and how often it’s overlooked in L&D).
Scaling and Growth
Transform: How do you build a strong company culture while scaling Arist?
Michael: We keep our team extremely small (13 people total) and over-index on an individual’s rate of growth, their belief in the mission, and kindness above all else. The intersection of excellence and kindness is at the root of our culture, and most of all, we try to have a fun time while we’re building Arist.

Fundraising
Transform: How do you maintain strong relationships with your investors and optimize their contributions?
Michael: We love our investors and are lucky to have the best backers in the world (from our point of view). They deeply understand our long-term vision and are playing the long game right beside us, and we are extremely transparent with them about highlights and lowlights. We also send regular updates with clear asks to specific customers or candidates, and clarity of request helps a lot.
Transform: What advice do you have to similarly situated founders as they begin fundraising?
Michael: You need to be extremely clear about how you get to massive scale — $100m ARR and beyond. Most founders don’t have a clear strategy for getting there, and it hurts them in the fundraising process.
Team Building & Leadership
Transform: What are your strategies for attracting and retaining talent at Arist?
Michael: Our mission is a big draw — people are excited about transforming education and making a real impact, especially since we’re doing something so different from the norm. Beyond that, we offer meaningful work, opportunities for rapid growth, and a culture of innovation. We also emphasize work-life balance — after all, we’re in the business of making learning fit into people’s lives, so we should practice what we preach.
Transform: What leadership skills do you believe are critical in the current environment?
Michael: Being super clear, concise, and staying on the cutting edge. It’s very easy for leaders to fall behind, given the pace of things, and clarity and conciseness help everyone do their job far better. Leaders should also be exceptionally kind — there is no room or reason for unkind leadership.
Marketing & Branding
Transform: How do you differentiate your brand from competitors?
Michael: We focus on having as much fun as possible while providing real value through our research, data, and market insights. For a conference a few years ago, for example, we brought in a camper van and hosted “bonfire” chats with clients. A lot of our focus is also making it very clear that what we’re doing is very different and challenging assumptions as bluntly (and as uniquely) as possible.
Challenges & Lessons Learned
Transform: Can you share any specific lessons or mistakes you made during the startup journey and how you overcame them?
Michael: One big lesson was about the importance of focus. Early on, we were excited by all the potential applications and tried to pursue too many directions at once. This stretched our resources thin and slowed our progress. We overcame this by forcing ourselves to prioritize ruthlessly, focusing on the use cases where we could deliver the most value and gain traction fastest. It was hard to say no to exciting use cases, but that focus ultimately allowed us to grow much faster.
Transform: What advice do you have for other founders?
Michael: Focus on the value you provide (this should be extremely narrow to start), and be very clear about what budget your buyers are pulling from to bring you in.
Industry and Market Insights
Transform: What is one significant trend or prediction that you believe will drive the transformation of work?
Michael: The half-life of skills is shrinking rapidly, and the traditional model of front-loading education or periodic training sessions just can’t keep up and will break within the next few years. Companies that can effectively embed ongoing learning into their employees’ daily routines will have a significant competitive advantage, which is our core bet at Arist.

Company Vision
Transform: What’s next for you and Arist?
Michael: Our long-term vision is to make learning more and more autonomous, and we’re very excited about our Teammate product, which is the first end-to-end AI employee for L&D teams. It’s been miraculous to see AI create and deliver complex programs end-to-end, and we can’t wait to give every L&D team 100x the bandwidth.
Transform: What would you like to say to People leaders who are thinking of using your platform?
Michael: If you’re looking for a way to dramatically increase engagement with your training programs and drive real behavior change, Arist is worth exploring. Our platform isn’t just another tool — it’s a fundamentally different approach to learning that aligns with how people actually consume information today and what the research says — and we highly recommend giving it a shot and asking your learners for feedback. We’re here to help!
About You
Transform: Describe your perfect day when you aren’t working.
Michael: I love architecture, cooking, and cycling. A morning sketching session followed by brunch at home and a bike ride in the afternoon is pretty ideal.
Transform: What is your personal mantra?
Michael: Our responsibility to others is to be kind and solve real problems. There’s a lot to solve, and we are capable of so, so much.
Check out other inspiring Founder Spotlights on the Transform blog.