Three years in, the story

Three years ago, I generated the first certificate on the Open CPD platform.

CPD Perspectives: Three Years In — Part 1 of 4

You just don’t know what you don’t know. Yes, I’ve built companies before, and know how to bolt things on, get things off the ground, yet, there were a million and one things I wish I knew when I launched Open CPD. This is the story of what I learnt.

I knew there was a problem worth solving. I knew the existing options for training providers were either too expensive, too bureaucratic, or too fragile to trust. I knew that recognition — real recognition, not just a logo on a PDF — mattered more than the market seemed to realise.

What I didn’t know was how long it would take to build something real. How many experiments it takes to get something right. Things that needed to be dropped and/or started in other forms. How many things that looked like traction would turn out to be something else entirely. And how, somewhere in the middle of all that, Open CPD would stop being a promising idea and become a company.

This April, we turn three. And I want to tell the story honestly — not the polished version, but the one that might actually be useful to someone building something of their own.

Over the next four weeks, I’ll be sharing what each year actually looked like: the decisions that shaped us, the things that went wrong, and the moments where something quietly shifted.

This is not a success story in the conventional sense. Revenue is modest. Has the journey been slower than I expected? Definitely. Was it all necessary? Most of it, yes. Could I have done it faster/got further/achieved more? Who knows. I am happy with where we are, the foundations are solid, the product is good, and the direction is clear. For a bootstrapped business in a niche that most people didn’t know existed three years ago, I think that’s worth saying out loud.

Next week: Year One — the decision that defined everything.

CPD Perspectives is a series exploring accreditation and recognition from every angle. Three Years In is a sub-series following the Open CPD journey — for founders, for training providers, and for anyone building something in a space that matters.