Shaun Nanan built Nanan Academy into a recurring revenue education platform on one rule: you can't develop a person short term. The curriculum, the platform, and the revenue all flow from that.
Nanan Academy is not a workshop. It's not a summer camp. It's a STEM education business designed for semester-over-semester, year-over-year student journeys — and the revenue model is built to match that timeline.
What Nanan Academy Sells
Nanan Academy runs three offer tiers that map to different delivery contexts and age groups.
After-school programs are the core engine. Parents pay tuition for weekly STEM classes — coding, robotics, video game development, 3D printing, financial literacy, entrepreneurship. These run as a franchise model: branch managers or lead teachers facilitate locations across various communities. Students enroll semester after semester, and the journey can run from grade 3 through grade 12.
School licenses are a B2B subscription. Schools pay a per-seat monthly license to use Nanan Academy's platform and course materials directly in the classroom. The school board or an industry partner backs the cost. This is straight recurring revenue — predictable, scalable, and not dependent on individual parent enrollment.
Summer camps and winter workshops are seasonal fee-based events. Parents register their children for focused short-term programs. These feed the top of the funnel: students who attend a camp often convert into semester-long after-school enrollees.
The offer structure creates the pathway. The retention numbers — semester-over-semester re-enrollment — tell you whether the product is actually working.
The Differentiator: Sustainable Education, Not Summer Camps
Shaun's core thesis is simple and shapes every decision:
“You can't develop a person short term. It's more long term.”
He draws the parallel openly: you don't become a good soccer player in a summer camp. You don't learn to swim in a weekend workshop. STEM education and essential skills — communication, leadership, collaboration, cultural competency — require the same sustained practice as any other discipline.
This matters operationally. It means the curriculum is designed as a multi-year journey, not a series of disconnected courses. It means the platform must support longitudinal progress tracking. And it means the revenue model cannot depend on constant new customer acquisition. The business only works if students stay — and students only stay if the results are visible.
Nanan Academy's youngest students are in grade 3. The oldest are post-secondary and adult learners. The core catalog runs from introductory coding and robotics through advanced game development, electric circuits, and entrepreneurship. Each stage feeds the next. The question driving offer design isn't “how do we keep this student paying?” — it's “what are they going to need next?”
The Platform: Built for an Eight-Year-Old
Nanan Academy's learning management system was built on WordPress with LearnDash. Shaun tried off-the-shelf tools first — Thinkific, Google Classroom, and other pre-built LMS platforms. They didn't fit.
The problem wasn't features. It was flexibility. Shaun needed a system that could handle custom course structures, interactive modules, and a specific UX standard: any eight-year-old should be able to navigate it independently.
“The system that we built is designed that any eight year old child can go through it, of course, independently. That's the key right there. It's very simple to use, very easy to use.”
The stack runs WordPress plus LearnDash, with H5P for interactive exercises and Presto Player for video delivery. Shaun's co-founder built the backend templates. Once the framework was in place, publishing new lessons became straightforward.
Teachers get a dashboard to manage their own classrooms: add students, track progress, review assessments. Students get a step-by-step interface that doesn't require training. And administrators get a platform that any school can adopt without a dedicated IT team.
The decision to build rather than buy is a trade-off most membership and eLearning operators face. Shaun's view is that the initial learning curve is real, but the long-term customization payoff is worth it — if your vision doesn't fit inside someone else's template.
The Revenue Model: Three Streams, One Timeline
The three revenue streams are not random diversification. They are the operating system behind a recurring revenue education platform built for long-term student journeys.
After-school tuition provides the base recurring revenue. Parents enroll their children semester after semester. The consistency is intentional: “It's not that you're going to come for a couple of days or even just one semester. We want to have that sustainable growth for the individual.”
School seat licenses provide predictable B2B income. A school signs a license agreement, pays per student per month, and uses the platform in the classroom. This scales without requiring new physical locations or additional marketing spend.
Camps and workshops provide seasonal cash flow and lead generation. A student who attends a summer camp and has a strong experience is a natural candidate for semester enrollment.
The franchise model for after-school locations adds another layer of scalability. Branch managers run local operations under the Nanan Academy system. Shaun and Latin focus on curriculum, platform, and partnerships.
Industry partnerships — Skills Canada, K+S Potash, Enbridge, Yara International, SaskPower — enable access in rural, remote, and Indigenous communities that couldn't otherwise afford STEM education. The partnerships typically cover equipment (laptops, robotics kits) or subsidize tuition. The programs still generate revenue; the sponsorship removes the barrier to entry.
The Pivot: Catching Students Before It's Too Late
Shaun didn't start Nanan Academy because he saw a market opportunity. He started it because he saw a failure pattern.
As an instructor and later program head at Saskatchewan Polytechnic, he watched high school graduates arrive with potential but without preparation. The gaps were consistent: communication skills, math foundations, time management, study habits. The institution offered tutoring and counseling, but by then it was too late for many students.
“The answer is, well, how do you prepare them for success? And the answer is you need to get them sooner. You need to train them at a younger age and prepare them for that future.”
This observation became the origin story — and the operational constraint. Everything had to work for younger learners. The platform had to be simple enough for an eight-year-old. The teaching methodology had to be engaging enough to hold a middle schooler's attention. And the business model had to be affordable enough for parents to commit long-term.
The pivot from post-secondary instructor to K-12 founder wasn't a career change. It was a diagnosis followed by a prescription.
Validation by Results, Not Intentions
Shaun's North Star metric is student outcomes — and he tracks them relentlessly.
“If we don't have good results, there's no business.”
Nanan Academy collects qualitative and quantitative data on every student: where they started, where they are now, and what changed. The twice-yearly student showcase is both a marketing event and a measurement tool. Students demonstrate their projects to the public — 3D models, video games built in Scratch or Python, robotics, mobile apps. An entrepreneurship cohort sells products for real money.
At one showcase, a group of 8–11 year olds sold handmade slime. They packaged it professionally, labeled it, and brought 26 containers. They sold out.
The Minecraft leadership experiment provides another data point. Shaun put 20 middle schoolers in a shared survival world and timed them. Round one: arguments, blame, finger-pointing. They lasted 20 seconds. After a debrief on leadership and collaboration, round two lasted a minute and a half. After another debrief, round three lasted 12 minutes and 50 seconds — until a skeleton attack ended the run.
The debrief quotes are telling. One ten-year-old said: “Being a leader doesn't mean that you're the boss. It means you're helping others.” Another said: “You can accomplish more as a group than individually.”
These are not soft outcomes. They are tracked, repeatable, and visible — and they drive the business forward.
What Membership and eLearning Operators Can Take From This
Shaun Nanan doesn't run a traditional membership site. He runs a recurring revenue education platform that solved retention through offer architecture, platform customization, and a relentless focus on student outcomes.
A few things transfer directly:
If your business model doesn't match your customer timeline, one of them is broken. Nanan Academy's semester-over-semester enrollment isn't a retention tactic — it's the core design. The product is the duration. Ask yourself: does your membership or course structure assume a customer journey that your content doesn't actually support?
Build your platform for the user who needs the most help, not the one who needs the least. Shaun designed for eight-year-olds who had never used an LMS. The result is a system that schools, teachers, and parents can all adopt without training. Complexity under the hood doesn't require complexity on the surface.
Results are the only retention strategy that scales. Nanan Academy's re-enrollment isn't driven by email sequences or discount offers. It's driven by students who demonstrate progress at the showcase, sell products to strangers, and ask to continue next semester. If your members can't point to a concrete outcome from their time with you, no loyalty program will save the renewal.
The slime business and the Minecraft experiment aren't cute stories. They are evidence that the product delivers what it sells. That's the standard worth building toward.
Shaun Nanan is the co-founder and academic director of Nanan Academy.
You can find him at nananacademy.com
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