The tool I wish I had: why I co-founded Coursebox
Travis Clapp, co-founder and CEO of Coursebox, on 16 years in learning tech, building courses by hand, the "virtual box" idea nobody would fund, and why delivery is what makes Coursebox different.
We're building Coursebox for the version of me who spent months on every package.
About 15 years ago, I was building compliance courses by hand as an instructional designer at Open Colleges. Every unit meant 5 documents written from scratch: the mapping document, the learner guide, the learner assessment, the assessment documentation and, if there was a face to face part, a PowerPoint. One course took a couple of months.
Working directly with clients, the slow part moved somewhere else. Getting the content out of a subject matter expert, approved, and into a structure everyone was happy with could take a month of back and forward before a single document got built. Coursebox is exactly the tool I wish I had back then.
Coursebox in 2026: courses built and delivered in more than 180 countries, and more than 300,000 courses generated.
What problem did I keep running into as an instructional designer?
Every course took me a couple of months, and most of that time went into production. Somewhere in those years I started asking myself how I could replicate what I do. I was basically talking myself out of a job.
The idea I kept coming back to was a virtual box. A trainer uploads all their documents, the software does everything I do as an instructional designer, and the course builds itself in minutes, in any language. That's still the picture we build Coursebox toward.
"It was like magic just uploading a PDF and then generating all the information."
Daniela, educational speech-language pathologist, from her Coursebox review
What is Coursebox here to do?
We help people share their skills and knowledge around the world, as training that gets results for the learner. The course is how a learner gets there. A trainer who spends all their time building content, and none of it engaging the learner and measuring results, is letting the building get in the way.
The people I picture are experts with real knowledge and a document to work from, who have never had a background in instructional design. My Mum is one of them. She is a credentialed diabetes educator, and the section of a diabetes course she built on Coursebox went on to win an international award.
Why couldn't we build it sooner?
It looked prohibitively expensive to do what I really wanted to do. 4 years ago, an AI that builds courses sounded ridiculous. I went looking for a prototype anyway, and the first quote came back at over 1 million dollars. Nobody would fund that, and I understood why.
Then GPT came out with an API, and the same idea suddenly cost a fraction of that first quote. I was relieved. I remember ringing Alex and telling him we could finally build the thing we had been talking about, and we went heavy into it.
What makes Coursebox different from asking a chatbot for a course?
Coursebox creates what I call a corporate classroom every time. When I ask a general AI tool to build a course, every course comes out quite different, and it is very hard to control the settings and repeat the result. It hands back a static course with no interaction, no tutor, no auto grading and no LMS, so I get a 1% version of Coursebox each time when I want the other 99%.
Every Coursebox course comes with an AI tutor for the learners, AI grading of their assignments, practice scenarios, and the tracking and certificates around it.
Anyone can create a course quickly now, and what makes us better is the delivery. Some of our customers run everything on Coursebox. Others already have an LMS they cannot change, so they publish the course, export it through SCORM or LTI, and it runs inside their LMS and stays in sync. We call it Coursebox because a course gets boxed up and put wherever it needs to go.
How do we run Coursebox day to day?
We obsess over our customers, and I'm still the one on the front line. I get up at 5am, and by 6 I'm reading every support conversation from overnight. I do it deliberately so I can feel the pain of our clients around the world, and anything worth improving goes to the team the same morning.
We put so much of our blood, sweat and tears into making this the best product on earth. Every piece of feedback gets heard, and the team moves fast on it.
We keep the terms simple too. Customers can start free, go month to month, and have unlimited learners on every plan. There's no catch. We love this thing, and we just want to keep it growing.
Every yes a customer hears exists because of the team building Coursebox with me every day. Moving Coursebox onto its new infrastructure for version 2.1 was a 12-month project, and getting there was like moving a mountain. The team got us there.
Where is Coursebox heading next?
If a trainer can imagine it, they can build it into the course. In August 2026 we showed Custom Interactions for the first time: a trainer describes what the learners should be able to do, and Coursebox builds it. That can be protective equipment that has to go on in the right order, a drug calculation that flags a wrong dose the moment it is entered, or a piano the learners can sit down and play.
Further out, I want learners to go deeper still, trying the skill, getting pushed and getting feedback in real time. I call it break my brain. My team doesn't love the name, so we're not quite sure what to call it yet, but I'm very excited about it.
The Coursebox story, from my side
My whole career has been in learning and the web. I started out as an instructional design consultant, then created Web Design Cafe, then spent 7 years building a socialised, democratised LMS. Coursebox grew out of that.
I knew I needed a co-founder who was great at marketing, and 4 years ago I found Alex Hey through a Y Combinator matching service. We're different on purpose: the marketing is his side, and the building and the learning design are mine. Our first big decision together was pivoting the whole company hard into AI.
Alex is in Perth, I'm in Adelaide, and every 2 to 3 months I fly to Perth to work alongside him and the team. Alex tells his side of how we met in Why we built Coursebox AI.
A note to the people who build with Coursebox
Anyone who writes to us gets a fast answer at any hour, and I still read every message myself, usually before the sun comes up. That's how close I want to stay to the people building with Coursebox.
Frequently Asked Questions
Coursebox was co-founded by Travis Clapp, the CEO, and Alex Hey, the COO. They met 4 years ago through a Y Combinator co-founder matching service. Travis is based in Adelaide and Alex in Perth.
Because a course gets boxed up and can run wherever it is needed: in Coursebox's own branded LMS, or inside the LMS an organisation already uses through SCORM or LTI.
Yes. Travis has spent about 16 years in learning tech, starting as an instructional designer building courses by hand, including compliance training at Open Colleges. Coursebox is built around the steps an instructional designer takes.
Yes. Anyone can start free with 3 mini courses and no card, then move to a paid plan month to month.
Travis Clapp
Travis Clapp is the original founder and CEO of Coursebox. As an experienced instructional designer, he has lived through the process of building high quality courses. These experiences brought about his idea to upload all your documents and ideas into a virtual box that could convert those magically into a course. Prior to Coursebox, he successfully founded and built a social based LMS. Travis has 15+ years of experience designing courses and EdTech platforms from university MOOCs to enterprise LMS. Travis has built training for reputable companies like Johnson & Johnson, Electrolux, Michael Hill and SA Health. One of his courses reached 20,000+ learners which was a flagship edX course. He is based in the Adelaide, South Australia office and passionately works on customer support, sales and bringing the original product vision to life every day.
