The Enky Team, Part I

Welcome back to the Enky, Inc. blog! It has been about a month since our last post & I’m sure some of you have been wondering where we went and if Enky was coming back. Rest assured we have been working hard in that time not only to further develop the business and underlying software, but to learn how best to serve the market & our future users. As the summer winds down & autumn rapidly approaches, this blog will be updated more regularly with posts about the company, our mission to serve professionals of all types & how we will accomplish that mission, the state of the various professions in the US, and real experiences from professionals across fields as varied as social work, law, accounting, and medicine. We look forward to engaging with both our future professional users and course provider partners through this blog, and encourage readers to interact with us through the commentary section on each post.

Before we get into more details of how Enky will make the lives of professionals and course providers much simpler, more efficient, and less costly, I would like to properly introduce myself and the rest of the team behind the company. My name is Mike Coté & I am the CEO & co-founder of Enky, Inc., the first online professional education marketplace. I grew up in a household with two parents who are diligent, hard-working businesspeople & that has always driven me to want to achieve the success they earned. Ever since I was in elementary school, I have been trying to think of ways to start a business or project that could become a success. Whether it was trying to get my classmates to join the cast of the superhero movie I was writing & directing (it was too far before its time unfortunately, and I was in 3rd grade), or launching my own toy business during 6th grade study hall, I have always had an entrepreneurial streak. I vividly remember overseeing the paper football assembly line, while simultaneously trying to figure out what pricing to use for our variety of products & how to finish my math homework before class the next day. The experience I had starting & running that business over a couple years with some friends in middle school truly cemented in my mind a dream of one day becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Thankfully, I was able to continue to follow my passion in high school, as I studied business & learned more about what it really takes to understand how an actual business runs. By joining business clubs, competing in a wide variety of business plan competitions, and throwing myself fully into school projects where entrepreneurial spirit was required, the passion I had was further stoked. Some of my fondest memories of these years involved our business club’s weekly pizza sales fundraising events, which I ran with the help of two of my best friends. I am proud to say that we not only found a pizza supplier that cost less & had better quality than that of the years prior, but we were able to significantly increase the profitability of these weekly fundraisers, which helped send deserving students to business competitions across the state & country. At Boston College (go Eagles!), I studied accounting & finance, while competing in the school’s venture capital competition with classmates. Although the business idea we presented did not win, going through the process of speaking with start-up lawyers, angel investors, & venture capitalists was an enlightening experience that reinforced my desire to move my career towards entrepreneurship.

Coming out of graduate school, I joined Ernst & Young as an auditor & CPA. Following this career path, I thought, would give me great experience in multiple types of businesses varying by size, industry, and public/private status. In the two years I spent at EY, I gained a great deal of knowledge on these subjects from a wonderfully diverse & international group of managers, teammates, & clients that I had the privilege of working with. After leaving EY, it was initially a challenge to move on with my life & career, but the spark of entrepreneurship caught fire within me again & with the help of my co-founder Bryan Andrade, my family & friends, Enky was born. I am extremely excited to be able to share this ambitious vision for the future of professional education with you, & I look forward to the opportunity to deliver upon that vision. Stay tuned to this blog for further updates & bios for the rest of our team, and I sincerely hope you give us the chance to impress you. I know we will.

Yours truly,

Mike Coté
Enky, Inc. CEO/Co-Founder