Craig Johnstone

f095 +44(0)1563 598 222

More about me:

Tell us about what you do at Giglets

I have the privilege of being the CEO and Founder of Giglets Education. This gives me the opportunity to lead our wonderful team, strategy and vision for our future growth and development. All the while the role means that I get to see the impact our products and services make to children and young people on a daily basis. Every day is different, challenging and rewarding - mostly in equal measure!

How did you find yourself working for an EdTech company?

My entrepreneurial journey started through getting involved in Young Enterprise Scotland, a charity that I’m now an ambassador for. I got involved with a group of friends in starting a small paper publishing business called Giglets Books Limited in 2007 - we created a text called Tam O’Haggis. Fast forward a few years, having completed my degree in International Business with Marketing at the University of Strathclyde in 2011, I’d decided that paper publishing wasn’t for me (and so had my mates) but ideas of digital reading had begun to develop. I met new business partners and Giglets Education was born - our road to becoming an EdTech business had truly begun!

What are you most proud of since joining Giglets?

Founding and growing a business with a close-knit team is a rollercoaster like no other. There have been so many key proud moments. Since I’m CEO I’m going to break the rules and give you two of my top ones. The first was when we won an award called ScotEDGE in 2013, this provided us with £46,500 of grant funding that gave us the oxygen to be able to invest in the prototype of the Giglets platform - without that money, at that moment, we might not be here today.

The second was in March 2022 when we successfully completed the acquisition of the business to the leading Nordic EdTech player, ILT Education, in a private equity backed deal by the social impact investor, Trill Impact. To have a global business from an overseas market recognise the value and power of what we do, having really started from an idea at school left me feeling hugely proud.

If you weren’t at Giglets, what would you be doing?

As a teenager I’d always wanted to be a fast jet pilot in the Royal Air Force, that would be a pretty incredible job and a worthy alternative! That said, I’m not sure I ever had the maths or physics skills required - maybe we should build a product for that?

What 3 words would you use to describe working at Giglets?

Stimulating, challenging and rewarding.